


Betrüger

by Apollymi



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, M/M, Novella
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-03
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-09-12 07:36:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 65,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9062623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apollymi/pseuds/Apollymi
Summary: Kaiba Seto has never been able to believe anything he hears. Why should Bakura be any different?





	1. Chapter 1

“Now remember, everyone! Hugs, not slugs!”  
  
Put like that, and suddenly it was all he wanted to do: beat on someone until the flesh broke and blood poured forth, until what was supposed to be on the insides was on the outside and everybody could see it. That had to be the most glorious idea he had heard yet in this place and certainly was a lot better than anything anyone in charge had ever proposed.  
  
“Niisama...” Mokuba interrupted his thoughts almost as if he could hear them, and wouldn’t that be a funny proposition? A little brother who could read his mind? That could be either absolutely wonderful or completely horrible, depending on if Mokuba decided to use it for good or evil.   
  
Of course, it was Mokuba. He would definitely use it for evil. That was just how he was.  
  
“What?” he answered quietly.  
  
“You look like you’re thinking something violent. Stop it.”  
  
“I don’t want to.” Even Mokuba wasn’t going to make him doing anything he didn’t want to, and frankly, he wanted to think about hurting the people in front of him. See if they gave him those strange, pitying looks then, once he had turned them inside out a few times. All he needed was a time and an excuse. What he didn’t really need was an alibi: he had the papers that could get him out of jail for just about anything.  
  
They didn’t like sending crazy people to jail, after all. If everyone thought he was crazy, then there was no reason not to use it to his advantage every now and then. Get out of jail free card and all that.   
  
“Would Mokuba like to join us today?”   
  
Like that one, that woman, Mazaki, he couldn’t decide if he wanted to kill her first or last. Sometimes he thought it would be best to get it over with so he didn’t have to hear her anymore, but other times he thought he wanted to make sure she suffered most, so having her go last would be best. He was relatively certain that she was the one who kept making recommendations to up his pills, all the while talking about things like she knew anything. She didn’t know anything.   
  
“No,” he replied immediately. Mokuba probably did want to go join in whatever asinine thing the staff had cooked up for them to do, but _he_ didn’t. If he saw one more checkerboard or grilled window, it would be too soon.  
  
“Aww, come on, niisama.” Yep, right on cue, his annoying little brother had decided to pipe up to say the exact opposite of what he was thinking. Just his luck. “Maybe you can get them to pull out the chess set. We like chess still, right?”  
  
“They won’t let me use it anymore since you lost a piece.” And the idea of him being persuasive was downright ludicrous. If he wanted to get his way, he would just plow through all opposition until he got what he wanted. Or that was how he used to do things, before he ended up in here. “And I don’t want to be around them anyway.”  
“Now, Kaiba-san, that’s not very sociable of you.”  
  
“I don’t want to be sociable. I don’t _do_ sociable.”   
  
Well, if they could say nothing else about this place, they could at least call a small victory on the fact that he was definitely talking a lot more now than he had been when he first arrived. Granted, he didn’t enjoy interacting with anyone here, but he definitely had fewer qualms about giving the nurses, especially Mazaki, a bit of verbal hell. He could almost enjoy that part. Anyone who was that cheerful for no good reason – and in fact, she was like that all the time – needed to be taken down a bit.   
  
If he couldn’t indulge in his homicidal fantasies towards her, he could at least be as rude as possible to her.  
“Well, if you don’t want to join in,” she said, the smile on her face never even faltering, “you’re welcome to read or watch television.” He snorted. The only television he watched was the news, and they very rarely showed that in here. As for reading, he had long since read everything they had to offer, such that the pitiful selection was. “Or you can go back to your room for the rest of the afternoon.”  
  
“Sounds great,” he bit out hard. “It’s better than out here.”  
  
Storming out had little effect on the always overly cheerful nurse. It never did. She was already turning away to speak with one of the doctors. The paranoid part of him wondered if they were talking about him. Hmph, probably. There wasn’t anyone else here nearly as interesting. Hearing the words ‘delusions’ and ‘aggression’ did make it seem like he was the topic of conversation.   
  
“It’s not paranoia if they are out to get you,” Mokuba offered cheerfully, skipping a bit ahead of him. His sneakers made absolutely no noise on the tile floors, and he really wished his little brother would tell him how he managed to do that. “Or if they really are talking about you.”  
  
“So why don’t you go find out what they’re saying?”  
  
Mokuba shrugged. “I could, I guess, but I’d rather stick with you.” He turned so that he was walking backwards, skillfully avoiding any obstacles as if they weren’t even there. The boy made a face that he found it hard not to laugh at. “I don’t like how they ignore me.”  
  
‘Ignoring’ was a generous way of phrasing it. Most of the time, the people here liked to act as if Mokuba didn’t even exist. Sometimes – and he didn’t like thinking those times – they insisted that Mokuba was a figment of his imagination.   
  
That just wasn’t something he was willing to accept. Mokuba was the most important person in the world to him. That was why he was probably the most resistant ‘patient’ in this damn place. The pills threatened to take Mokuba away from him. There was no way – absolutely no way in hell – he was allowing that.   
  
If they took Mokuba away from him, he would be all alone. Mokuba was all he had left.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
“So what are the rules of this again?”  
  
He sighed and lowered his makeshift set of playing cards. Someone along the way had decided he got a bit obsessive when it came to playing games, so his actual deck was confiscated. This one was cobbled together. He had made them from scraps of paper and used the best of his recollection of what each card had said. Mokuba had drawn the pictures, and maybe it was a biased older brother opinion to think they were good.  
  
Of course, after all that work, he seemed to be doomed explain the rules to Duel Monsters over and over and over again. It had never been his little brother’s game of choice. That had been Capsule Monsters, a game for which he had never acquired a taste.  
  
Really, he’s lost count just how many times he has explained the basic rules of Duel Monsters to Mokuba over the years, but this one had to be somewhere in the low thousands. He was honestly starting to think that Mokuba hated the game and was tying him up with explanations so that the boy didn’t have to play.  
  
“Mokuba...”  
  
 _-He’s here. The one who listens, he’s here.-_  
  
He winced, clutching his head and folding himself down, anything to make the new voice disappear. Why did it have to happen now, right when he finally got some time alone with his little brother?   
  
_\--What’s the plan?--_  
  
 _-We have plans now?-_  
  
 _There was a displeased sounding snort. --Maybe we can just wait it out and let him off himself. Hey, you, if you’re listening, off yourself so I don’t have to deal with you.--_  
  
 _The first voice sighed heavily. -Never mind. There’s no need to be like that. I’ve got a plan.-_  
  
He had been hearing voices like these as long as he could remember, at least since the orphanage. Try as he might, he wasn’t always able to sort them out from what he was hearing people around him say. He had kept quiet about it as long as he was able to back then, but eventually, he had broken down and talked to one of the counselors about the problem.   
  
It turned out that hearing voices was pretty much a one-way trip to the asylum. Mokuba had tagged along with him, so that he wouldn’t be alone. For that, he would be eternally grateful to his baby brother. For that, he would never, ever allow the two of them to be separated.  
  
“What is it, niisama?” Mokuba sounded concerned, leaning over close to him in worry, a shaking hand hovering just inside his limited range of vision. “What’s wrong?” The boy paused for a long moment, and he could feel gray eyes staring at him. “The voices?”  
  
He nodded miserably and quietly admitted, “I don’t like them.”  
  
“I wouldn’t like them either!” Mokuba huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. But then he seemed to relent. “Aren’t you supposed to let them know when you hear the voices?”  
  
Technically speaking, he was supposed to, yes. He had even been told in no uncertain terms that, if the voices threatened harm to him or anyone else, he was to immediately report to the duty station for an emergency dose of Thorazine. That would mean dealing with Mazaki again, though, and he would rather deal with the voices than her.   
  
“I don’t want to.” He slowly unbent himself, glancing around the room in concern. They seemed to be alone, but in this place, he had no real delusions of privacy. There were cameras in the common areas, and he was pretty sure there were some hidden around in the rooms too and the door was standing wide open. “It’s okay. They’re quiet now. It’s okay.”  
  
“I thought I heard someone else down here.”  
  
He started in shock. In fact, for a long second, he thought the voices were starting up again. But no, there was someone at the door. At first glance, he thought it was an old woman. The voice and face were all wrong, though. If anything, the man at his door was in his mid-twenties, certainly no older than he himself was, and his voice was no higher than a tenor. All he could guess was that it had been the long, white hair that had given him the impression of old age.  
  
Like him, the other man wore a plain white t-shirt and gray sweatpants; the other had added an extra layer of a robe, keeping it tightly wrapped around him. With his pale skin and light eyes, he almost looked whitewashed or like an unfinished painting. His next though, that the man was an albino, didn’t seem to be accurate either: while his eyes were pale, they were either blue or gray or maybe even a very light shade of brown; he was standing too far away for him to be certain.  
  
Mokuba nudged him subtly, obviously prompting him. “Kaiba Seto,” he introduced himself. He didn’t offer his hand. He had learned his lesson about that after nearly being bitten his second day here.  
  
“Bakura” is all the other man offers. He didn’t even add if that was a first name or a last name. Kaiba was willing to note that he didn’t offer his hand either and in fact didn’t even uncross them from over his chest, like he was trying to keep them wrapped around him. “They just moved me in next door.”  
  
He held back a wince. Not even a week ago, the person next door had hung himself. He hadn’t been too surprised: the guy had been the heir to one of the automotive companies and had suicidal-level depressed over the recent economic turns in that sector. Honda-something or other, he thought the man’s name had been. Since he had been here, at least four people had committed suicide in the rooms near him. It was not a reassuring thought.  
  
“He seems nice enough,” Mokuba offered quietly, leaning over to speak softly in his ear. “Maybe even sane enough. I wonder what he’s doing here.”  
  
The man, Bakura, didn’t even blink at Mokuba’s talking about him. Maybe it was because Mokuba had obviously been speaking only to him? Somehow, Bakura didn’t strike him as the polite type, but he had occasionally been known to be wrong before.   
  
Kaiba found himself shifting nervously under that pale gaze, and that was really weird. Very few things made him feel in the least bit uncomfortable, but the way Bakura was watching him steadily was definitely fitting that bill.   
  
Bakura bit his lower lip, finally looking away from him, eyes turned down as if in shame, before he spoke again. “Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m next door if you ever just want to hang out or anything. Later.” In a whisper of quiet movement, the pale man was back out of the room again. If he listened carefully, he could almost hear the door next door closing.  
  
Mokuba gave him all of two minutes in peace before he smacked him hard across the arm. “Oww!” he immediately yelped. “What was that for?”  
  
“One of these days, niisama, I’m going to teach you something about making friends.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
The boy nodded sagely. “Absolutely. See, you had a prime opportunity right there. Now he probably thinks you’re as crazy as everyone else in here.”  
  
That was a sadly possible thought. He had never been good around anyone but Mokuba in his life. Usually when people started talking to him, he seized up and could barely get words out. He had long since perfected a disapproving look to keep people from trying. All totaled, it had the side effect of making people think he was haughty or stuck-up or whatever.  
  
Now, not to say he didn’t mind people thinking that, most of the time. Anything to get himself a little peace and quiet was fine in his book, honest or not.   
  
Mokuba did have a point, though. He failed utterly on all levels at making friends. He always had. Maybe, just maybe, it was time to change that. This would take a bit of plotting and thinking about and studying on and such before he made any decisions, though. He had learned his lesson about doing anything without putting tons of thought into it first.   
  
Besides, there was every possibility that he had run Bakura off with how he had reacted to the other man, so approaching him for a friendship at this point could just turn out to be a moot point. If it wasn’t his off-putting attitude, then it could be the fact he only managed to get his name out – or even how he ended up staring as if he had never seen a person before.  
  
Yeah, it was probably just as well that he needed to think it over. He probably wasn’t going to see much of Bakura from here on out.  
  
That shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did.


	2. Chapter 2

It seemed someone had forgotten to give Bakura the memo that he was supposed to have been chased away by Kaiba’s bad attitude. Either that, or he was even more stubborn than Kaiba himself was. He was going to suppose it was the former and not the latter; he would hate to run into anyone who was more stubborn than he was, if that was even possible. Mokuba always said he was capable of setting new standards of obstinacy.   
  
The white-haired man was waiting just outside his door the next morning, again wearing that hideous terrycloth robe the hospital provided. It wasn’t even that cold in the hallways; it was more that standardized temperature all hospitals seemed to be.  
  
“Good morning,” Bakura greeted him, pushing off the wall where he had been leaning. At least he didn’t seem to be the overly cheerful type like Mazaki was. If the man insisted on being friendly towards him, that much was a good thing. Too cheerful people, again like Mazaki, got on his nerves.  
  
“Morning,” he returned cautiously. Immediately, he castigated himself for it. Really, no reason for him to be nervous had been given yet. Like Mokuba had said last night, the man seemed fairly sane, especially for this place. He almost wished that it wasn’t considered bad etiquette to ask why someone was here. He could admit to being a bit curious about the man’s story. Mostly sane people didn’t end up here after all.  
  
“You don’t mind me hanging with you for a bit, do you?” Great, he had gone and infected Bakura with his nervousness. That wouldn’t do in the least. “I checked out some of the other people here yesterday, and they were – Well, they were kind of scary. I don’t want to be hanging out alone with them. Yeah, they seem kind of out there.” Nervous or not, Bakura still obviously managed to talk a whole lot more than he ever would be able to do.  
  
He nodded. After a second, he even remembered to speak without Mokuba prompting him. “It’s no problem.”  
  
“Good, because that Mazaki woman is terrifying.”   
  
Unbidden, a snicker escaped from him. “Yes, she is.”  
  
“That kind of happy can _not_ be natural. Whatever pills she’s pilfering, she needs to share with the rest of the class.”  
  
“I don’t know if I want to be that kind of happy,” he found himself answering to his own surprise. This was already more of a conversation than he usually had with anyone but Mokuba, his doctor included. In fact, he couldn’t remember having a conversation this long since back at the orphanage.   
  
“Yeah, that’s true. It’s sickening, isn’t it?” He frowned, cocking his head to the side in consideration. “I can’t see you that kind of happy. I don’t think it would look right on you. No offense or anything, if you really wanted to be that kind of happy. Better living through pharmaceuticals and all that.”  
  
“I’ll pass,” he offered. “It’s not my scene.”  
  
“Good. So what passes for breakfast in this place?”  
  
Kaiba winced slightly. “It’s usually best not to ask.”  
  
“Ahh, mystery meals then?” He nodded, and Bakura chuckled. “All right, then I guess I’ll just take my chances then. Window or room?”  
  
He almost tilted his own head in puzzlement just as Bakura had, stopping only when he realized they were at one of the tables towards the back of the cafeteria area. In fact, it was one of the ones he usually would have chosen for himself, if the option were open. The two choices Bakura had offered made more sense when he realized where he was: one chair had a decent view of the room, while the other allowed for looking out the window. Neither one was a pleasant view, fences or fellow patients, but the thought of being given the choice was nice.  
  
“I don’t care.” Bakura raised an eyebrow at his lack of a decision, and finally he made the choice. “Window.”  
  
“Cool. So I get to people watch. I’ll let you know if Mazaki is coming.”  
  
“She’s usually only here on the night shift.”  
  
Bakura nodded, obviously filing the information away for later use. “Good to know. Any one I should watch out for on the day shift then?”  
  
He paused, taking his time to consider each of the nurses and doctors on the day shift. It filled the time while trays of what was imaginatively called food was set down in front of them. The paranoid part of him wondered if the orderly was taking notes and relaying information back to the nurses, especially about the fact that, for the first time since he had arrived here, he was willing sharing a table with another person. Well, another person that was neither a voice in his head nor his little brother.   
  
“I don’t think there’s anyone to really worry about, for the most part,” he finally answered. “No one like Mazaki, at least.”  
  
He resolutely was not going to mention the number of people on his – their – hall who had committed suicide since he had been here. It really wasn’t something that bore thinking too much about. After all, this was a hospital for the insane; some suicides along the way were probably to be expected.  
  
He even wasn’t going to mention how some people around here whispered that their hall was the ‘death hall’. Let someone else tell the other man that.  
  
“Well, that’s good at least. Is this supposed to be food or rubber cement?”  
  
Kaiba had to snicker at the other man’s disgruntled tone. “I’ve heard it call oatmeal before. It’s more like ‘cream of what’.”  
  
Bakura apparently picked up on the pun almost immediately. “Because it damn sure isn’t wheat?”   
  
“Exactly.”  
  
Bakura turned to stirring the grayish-brown lump on his plate, while he started tucking it away. It was only thanks to having been here as long as he had – and at the orphanage before that – that he was used to eating food that only just barely belonged in that category; it wasn’t a fellow patient, it wasn’t a doctor or a nurse, it wasn’t an orderly, and it wasn’t paperwork or medication, so it had to be food. In all honesty, though, he would challenge any member of the staff to try eating the patients’ meals for just one day.  
  
“You know,” Bakura began a few moments later, “until you started willingly eating that stuff, I was thinking you were awfully normal to be in here.”  
  
He snorted inelegantly. “It takes the food here to make you think someone isn’t normal? Good to know.”  
  
“No, seriously. What are you in for?”  
  
It was everything he could do not to drop his spoon into the remains of breakfast still on his plate. Clearly, Bakura had not yet found out about the unspoken rule: never ask someone why he was in here. At least, he hadn’t phrased it as badly as he had heard it once before, something about ‘what brand of crazy are you’. That had gone over like a lead balloon with everyone who had heard it.  
  
He didn’t want to be the one to have to explain to Bakura that questions like that were for the doctors and the nurses. Between the patients, they preferred to think of each other as people, not as diseases to be analyzed and perhaps treated. Personally, he would rather be Kaiba Seto, antisocial asshole, than Kaiba Seto, that guy who heard voices.  
  
As it was, he managed to set down his spoon in a decent pretense of calm. Verbally, though, all he could handle was a semi-intelligent soft grunt.  
  
“What? Am I not supposed to ask about stuff like that?” Bakura questioned, and in response, he shook his head slowly, not even trying to talk right now. “Well, why the hell not? Come on. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”  
  
His eyes flew up quickly from his plate to meet Bakura’s pale eyes. Already he could feel heat staining his face and down his throat. Did he really have to phrase it that way? Those were mental images he didn’t have any business thinking, especially about someone he had just met, even more so when that person apparently lacked any sense of tact.  
  
Finally, he shook his head, turning his eyes back down to latch onto his tightly clenched hands in his lap, and answered, “No.”  
  
At the edge of his vision, he could see Bakura scowl. “Fine.” With rough shoves and hands that might have been shaking just a bit, not that Kaiba could clearly see, the white-haired man pushed up the sleeves of that damn robe. White bandages covered the insides of both of his arms from the wrist to the elbow. He had seen more than a few of those since he had been there. “I decided the best way to make the walls quit bleeding was to try bleeding myself dry instead. My little sister called 911, and after I was patched up, the hospital shipped me off here.” He pushed the sleeves back down to cover the bandages and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “That’s why I’m here.”  
  
Despite the outward tells – the way his hands shook, how rough and jerky his every movement was, the way he was so careful to keep the bandages covered – Bakura’s voice had been so calm throughout the entire impromptu little speech. Kaiba didn’t think he could have done that. Perhaps it was more a mask, though, another way of hiding how uncomfortable he was talking about all of this.  
  
If it was a matter of masks, then he could definitely bluff his way through breaking this little taboo.   
  
Kaiba offered a shrug that might have seemed nonchalant to anyone not looking closely. “I hear voices. Not all the time or anything, but I hear things that aren’t there.”  
  
“A fellow hallucinator then.” Bakura seemed almost proud, perhaps pleased with that.  
  
“I don’t think that’s a real word.”   
  
And Bakura laughed. “Well, it should be. In fact, I say it is from here on out.”  
  
Somehow he too was laughing, and it felt both weird and good at the same time. “And what you say goes, right?”  
  
“Absolutely. All shall obey my will or else taste my wrath.” He glanced down, and a sardonic grin built on his face. “Or maybe I should threaten mutineers with this goop. That stuff can’t be natural.”  
  
“The key is to eat it quickly, so you can’t taste it,” he volunteered.   
  


* * *

  
  
“I see you’ve made a friend.”   
  
If Mazaki was bad, Kawai might have been three times worse. The young doctor was by no means as sickeningly cheerful as the late shift nurse. Instead, she was annoying optimistic about everything. Patient being transferred to a different hospital? ‘He’ll be happier once he’s closer to his family.’ Someone broke into her car? ‘It’s a lovely day to walk home.’  
  
There were days he wanted to cut her and see if she bled sugar and rainbows and light.   
  
He had never seen anything like that before. He had never had a visual hallucination before in his life. Maybe he could smuggle Bakura in here before he did it. That way, the white-haired man could tell him if she really was filled with all that crap.  
  
“Yeah, I guess,” he answered sullenly, not liking the distraction from his train of thought in the least.  
  
“What does Mokuba think of him?”  
  
“Mokuba encouraged me to make friends. Bakura’s the first person I’ve met here who seems worth the bother.” He did not voice his thoughts that they were only becoming friends because Bakura was too stubborn to let him get away with his usual short attitude. Kawai didn’t need to know that stuff. It wasn’t any of her business.  
And now that he thought about it, maybe Bakura actually was more stubborn than he was.   
  
At his side, Mokuba bounced slightly on his heels. “Yeah, I like Bakura. I like his sense of humor, and he even makes you laugh, niisama! I can’t remember the last time that happened.”  
  
Kawai nodded, twirling her pen in her auburn hair. “Well, that’s good, Kaiba. I’m glad to hear that. Having a friend here would be a wonderful thing for you.”   
  
He shrugged, not willing to wade into a debate on that. “Perhaps.”  
  
She nodded again pleasantly. “I do see a note in here that you were very rude to Nurse Mazaki last night. Is there anything you’d like to tell me about that?”  
  
The temptation to roll his eyes at the question was too strong to ignore, so he didn’t even try. “No. I just don’t like Mazaki.”  
  
“Why is that, do you think?”  
  
This time he was able to restrain the urge to make a rude comment or gesture. “I just don’t like her. She’s too... cheerful. That kind of person has always annoyed me.”  
  
She smiled sagely. “Miss Mazaki is indeed a very... upbeat sort of person. I can see how that might be annoying. I take it Bakura isn’t like that.”  
  
He shook his head slowly. “He’s a little like that, but not enough to be annoying. No, that’s not what I mean. Damn it.” He paused, frowning, trying to think how to explain better what he meant. As usual, however, Mokuba had said it best. “He has a good sense of humor. He makes me laugh.”  
  
“That’s good. I can’t say I’ve ever seen you do that, Kaiba.”  
  
“That’s what Mokuba said.”  
  
“It sounds like Mokuba knows what he’s talking about in that case then. I’m definitely glad to hear you’ve made a friend here then.”  
  
“Yeah,” he replied sourly, a darker thought suddenly occurring to him, “until you cure him and send him out of here.”  
  
She reached out and patted his arm lightly. Of all the doctors, Kawai was definitely the biggest on touching. Sometimes it actually annoyed the hell out of him, but at least this time, he had psyched himself up for it first. That way, it didn’t piss him off nearly as badly.  
  
“I don’t think it will be happening too quickly, Kaiba. Bakura has some issues we need to work on before he can leave.”  
  
Like bleeding walls and trying suicide to make the former cease. He had almost done a good job of the suicide as it was. Yeah, maybe Bakura would be here a while. Kaiba could get behind that, as bad as it was to think. He probably shouldn’t have been so hopeful that Bakura might have been crazy enough to be here a while, but well, he was. He didn’t exactly have a lot of friends, so he wanted to keep the one he had.  
  
But he damn sure wasn’t going to say any of that out loud, no more than he was going to mention the voices he had heard last night or the threat one of them had made. It had been blissfully quiet so far today, so there was no point in bringing stuff like that up really. It wasn’t productive to his goal of getting out of here some time soon. Not that he foresaw that happening at any point in the near future, but adding in things like that would do nothing to help matters.


	3. Chapter 3

Bakura was apparently willing to forgo that hideous robe when it was just the two of them and Mokuba in a room. It was a little odd to him how close in color the bandages were to Bakura’s skin. Honestly, he had never seen anyone nearly as pale. Mokuba had actually made a comment the other day about the likelihood of Bakura having ever seen the sun before in his life. As he stole furtive glances at the bandages and the pale skin visible next to them, he had to wonder the same thing himself.  
  
The next time he did it, Bakura followed his glance and snorted in amusement. Kaiba glanced up in confusion, and he commented, “Television and the movies get it wrong all the time. It’s down the block, not across the street.”  
  
If anything, the explanation was just as confusing as the original amusement. “What?”  
  
“Cutting down the arm,” Bakura explained, gesturing with an imaginary knife, “is how to do it. Across the wrist, that’s just to get attention. So, down the block, not across the street.”  
  
“I’ll have to take your word for that. I’m not planning on doing that any time soon.” There was no chance of that. He couldn’t leave Mokuba alone. He didn’t want to risk break up their little family.  
  
“Well, then, it’s ‘Bakura’s Helpful Hint of the Day’ or something. If you’re going to do something, you might as well do it right, yeah?”  
  
He frowned, considering. “So then...” He trailed off. Just because Bakura didn’t care enough to ask the taboo questions, there was no reason for him to breech etiquette and ask about things that really weren’t any of his business.  
  
Fortunately, Bakura didn’t seem to take offense to the aborted question, instead seeming amused by it. But then, a lot of things seemed to amuse Bakura. “So then why didn’t I manage to off myself?”  
  
“Well, yeah,” he answered slowly, shifting nervously on his bed. He had long ago put the pillow in his lap and picked at it now. “If you don’t mind, I mean.”   
  
Bakura shrugged, making himself more comfortable towards the foot of the bed. There weren’t exactly a lot of places to sit in Kaiba’s room. “No problem. I did it right, I know that. Amane – that’s my little sister – managed to find me and call 911 pretty quick though. That, and she’s studying to be a nurse and all is why I now sit before you today. Not that I remember any of the whole daring rescue or anything. I was pretty much unconscious at the time.”  
  
“Is it bad that I’m kind of glad you failed?” he asked after a long pause. Honestly, he couldn’t believe he was actually saying this. Too much damn therapy, making him say things that were better off kept private. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have my first friend.”  
  
Bakura leaned back slightly as if shocked. It turned out that was pretty accurate. “Woah, wait, time out. I’m your first friend? You’re how old, and I’m your first friend? What? Did they keep you in a box before you were here or something? Because, really, I’m a piss-poor person to be your very first friend. I mean, I’m kind of crazy and all that, so really, how?”  
  
“I was in an orphanage and a couple foster homes before I was here. It doesn’t exactly make for a lot of permanency in a person’s life, you know? Either people were always coming and going, or I was always going and coming.” He paused and frowned hard. “And I wasn’t going to stay with anyone who wouldn’t take my little brother too.”  
  
The other man made a quiet sound of agreement. “I agree. I wouldn’t be willing to stay anywhere where they wouldn’t take Amane in too. It’s part of the big brother code or something: take care of the younger kids.”  
  
Good! It had made sense to the other man, what he had been trying to say. “Exactly!” He paused, a thought occurring to him. “Is Amane old enough to be on her own right now, or is she with your parents or something?”  
  
Bakura shook his head. “Our parents have been gone for a really long time. It’s just been me and Amane for a while. She’s legal now, though. I guess it’s good that I waited ‘til now to have my big nervous breakdown, huh?”   
  
He nodded. “What about your little brother? How did that go down?”   
  
Really, why was he letting Bakura get away with all these questions? Normally, he would have shut the person asking them down hard and fast so that he didn’t have to deal with it. Yet here he was trying to think of how to answer instead. “I don’t remember our parents. We grew up with our uncle. I guess the whole voices thing got to being too much for him, so he renounced custody of the both of us, and we ended up in the orphanage; I don’t really remember too much about why Gouzaburou took us there. We were in the system for years, then they figured out I’m crazy. So here I am.”  
  
“Yeah, here you are, keeping me entertained and from doing something potentially stupid,” Bakura finished for him.   
  
_\--Have you found our guy yet?--_  
  
Kaiba winced and bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. Damn it, why did they have to start up again now? The voice was familiar too; it was the one that had told him to kill himself so that it didn’t have to.  
  
 _\--Then what’s the holdup? I’m bored and ready to go back now.--_  
  
It sounded like the voice was having a discussion with someone, maybe even the first voice, but he couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation. That was unusual. Typically he could hear the whole conversation regardless of whether or not he actually wanted to. For half of it to suddenly drop out would be worrisome later, when it wasn’t hurting his head and wrecking his concentration.  
  
 _\--So what? Just go ahead and kill him, or steal him, or – Hey! Do you still remember how to do that trick with the ice pick? The one that makes them do nothing but drool afterwards? Because that one’s always going to be a classic.--_  
  
He moaned quietly, hands covering his temples as his fingers dug into his hair as he tried to bury his head in the pillow in his lap. It didn't help, but it was worth a shot.  
  
 _\--I really don’t care, you know.--_  
  
Another hand carded through his hair, the touch tentative. It wasn’t Mokuba; the hand was too large, and besides, Mokuba typically didn’t touch him when the voices started up. Therefore, it had to be Bakura. Most people in general, with the notable exception of Kawai, didn’t touch him at all, and he was fine with that. Right now, though, he wasn’t too concerned because the touch felt sort of good.  
  
 _\--All right, fine, a little while longer. We need to get back, though. Things are probably going to shit without us.--_  
  
“Are you all right?” Bakura’s voice was quiet, and that was nice, after that voice’s sudden reappearance. “Do I need to go get someone?”  
  
He shook his head and then immediately regretted the movement as it sent new pain spiraling through his skull, along with a bout of nausea that he really could have lived without feeling any time soon. “I’ll be all right,” he responded just as softly. “I just need a few minutes.”  
  
“Yeah,” Bakura responded, though it didn’t necessarily sound like agreement. The other man was silent for several long minutes before he spoke again, which he appreciated; it gave him time to gather himself again. “You know, I can’t say any of my hallucinations ever hurt me like that, even the worst ones.”  
  
He lifted bleary eyes from the pillow to glance up at his friend. Almost immediately, however, he regretted the movement, as Bakura’s hand moved away from his head. “They always have.”  
  
Bakura growled, running a hand through his own hair in obvious sharp annoyance. “Then how do they call it schizophrenia then? That’s not one of the symptoms of it. The voices are supposed to tell you to hurt yourself or stand on your head or something like that. They... They aren’t supposed to hurt.”  
  
He shrugged and repeated his last answer again: “They always have.”  
  
“Then it isn’t schizophrenia, and your doctors are stupid.”   
  
There was an odd tone in Bakura’s voice, one he couldn’t immediately place. He sounded pissed off; that much was immediately obvious; but there was something else too, something that his exhausted mind processed as ‘old’ and ‘powerful’. That couldn’t be right, though. Bakura was no older than he himself was.   
  
“I like that theory,” he returned, slowly and carefully sitting up straight again. It was weird, but he felt a bit more shaken by this bout than any of the others he had felt over recent years. To try to combat the oddness, he tried a bit of Bakura’s humor. “Think we can have them arrested for practicing medicine while stupid?”  
  
“Oh, something will happen to them for it, believe me.”  
  
Oddly, he did. “I can get behind that.”  
  
“Good.” Bakura took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. With it, that impression of age and power seemed to slide away, leaving behind only the man his age who was a bit crazy but with a good sense of humor. It left the Bakura he was becoming used to, in other words, and as if in response to the silent thought, the white-haired man grinned. “What do you suppose they’d do to them for it? Practicing medicine while stupid?”  
  
“It’d be too much to hope for, I think, for them to all be locked away in one of these places, wouldn’t it?”  
  
Bakura wrinkled his nose. “Maybe they should be condemned to eat that Cream of What stuff every meal. I could totally get behind that as punishment. I’m still trying to figure out what I did in another life to deserve it, because seriously, it’s some of the grossest stuff I have ever tasted, and that’s counting Amane’s cooking.”  
  
He winced. That sounded a bit like some of his and Mokuba’s experiments over the years, before they had been completely banned from setting foot near any sort of kitchen... or even a hot plate. Really, it wasn’t as though they had _meant_ to burn stuff as badly as they had. Last he had heard anything about it, they were still trying to get little bits of popcorn off the ceiling.   
  
“Mokuba and I used to have some pretty amazing kitchen disasters. Amane’s can’t be that bad,” he offered, “not compared to ours.”  
  
Bakura offered him a flat look. “She nearly burned down an entire forest once. If it hadn’t started raining when it did... When she’s not causing wanton destruction, her food tends to be cooked to mush. At least she has discovered the beauty of spices, which is more than I can say for these schmucks, though.”  
  
“Your sister sounds... pretty amazing.”  
  
“And completely someone you don’t want to get involved with. She’s a vicious thing when the mood strikes her.”   
  
There were worlds of warning and threats tied up in those few words. If his sister Amane was someone he didn’t want to get involved with, then the implication was there that instead Bakura was someone he wanted to get involved with. There was also the threat about messing with his younger sibling. The latter he was familiar with and might have used himself at some point, but the former implication was more than a bit foreign to him.   
  
“I’ll bear that in mind,” he offered uncertainly.  
  
“Bakura?” Mazaki’s voice cut through their conversation, even as she stuck her head in Kaiba’s room. “We’re locking up for the night. You need to head back to your own room.”  
  
He could hear Bakura’s eyes rolling, even as he groaned aloud. “Yeah, yeah,” Bakura complained, standing up slowly and stretching. “I’ll be there in a moment.”   
  
Mazaki seemed to take this as fact and disappeared again through the doorway, though she did make a point of leaving the door open as a reminder.  
  
“God, she’s annoying,” he moaned. On a worse night, he might have even called it whining. Despite his confusion, though, he had been having a good night, so he wasn’t going to go as far as that tonight.   
  
“Yeah, she is. Remind me to smite her later.”  
  
He chuckled, picturing that to himself. It would be great, he thought, if Bakura could either smite her or curse her but good. Really, the whole being stuck eating the food they served the patients was good, but there had to be much more creative ones out there. He would have to ask Mokuba tonight. The boy was vastly more imaginative than he was.  
  
“Yeah, I’ll remind you. Good night.”  
  
“Good night.” Bakura paused at the open door, turning to look back at him, a curious expression on his face. “It’s supposed to be a full moon tomorrow night. Think we can sneak out and see it? Would you be interested? No iron latticed windows in the way?”  
  
He shrugged. What an odd question that was. “Yeah, I guess. It could be interesting. Getting out could be harder than hell, though.”  
  
Bakura winked, a slow grin building on his face. “Leave that part to me. I’ve got skills the world hasn’t even seen yet.”  
  
He laughed, the combination of sure pride and confidence in Bakura’s voice a bit amusing to him. “Sure.”  
  
“Don’t think I can?”  
  
“Oddly, yeah, I think you can, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”  
  
“You’re on,” Bakura countered. “Meet me right here, tomorrow night, after rounds.” Again he winked. “I’ll show you the world, baby.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You and Bakura really seem to be getting along well,” Mokuba commented.  
  
It was early in the morning, early enough that it could almost still be called late, and he had been awake for nearly half an hour. Granted, he usually didn’t sleep a lot anyway, but this was waking up early, even for him. At least Mokuba was here, so he didn’t have to face the silence of an empty room alone. A short lifetime with the voices and one less than silent little brother, and he found that he did not do well in silence or solitude.  
  
However, Mokuba was here for him to make sure that never happened. Otherwise, he might really go mad.  
  
At the moment, though, he was trying to decide if he needed to read anything into Mokuba’s tone or his comment. It had been just the two of them for so long that perhaps it wasn’t unexpected for the boy to sound a bit jealous. At the same time, though, he didn’t want to have to defend his first friend from his little brother, even just on a verbal level.   
  
It was sort of like those situational comedies, where one character walked in at the completely wrong time, read the situation completely wrong, and spent the rest of the movie being pissed off about something that wasn’t even close to true.  
  
“Yeah, I guess so,” he finally offered.   
  
“I guess that means you don’t need me anymore.”  
  
Horror flooded through him, turning his blood to ice in its wake. “No!” he hissed, barely remembering to keep his voice low, so security didn’t realize he was awake. “No, no way,” he whispered. “You’re my only little brother and the only family I have that’s worth a damn. I’m always going to need you.”  
  
“Even with your new best friend?”  
  
He nodded, fighting that churning feeling in his gut. “Absolutely. Now as much as ever and always,” he promised.  
  
“All right,” the boy relented. He resettled himself at the foot of the bed, in nearly the same location as Bakura had been only earlier that night. “So what did you guys talk about while I was out and about last night?”  
  
He shrugged. “Mostly family and food and how would be the best way to punish the hell out of Mazaki.”  
  
Mokuba looked a tad bit impressed. “He doesn’t like her either, I take it?”  
  
He shook his head. “Definitely not. I believe the word ‘smite’ came up.”  
  
And just like that, he had Mokuba’s full attention. “Really? Because that could get really fun and interesting. Smite how?”  
  
Kaiba shrugged. “He didn’t say how with the smiting, but he did mention earlier in the evening that he would like to make these people who work here have to survive on the food they feed us.” He paused, frowning in thought. “And then we got off on cooking and how his sister nearly caused a forest fire.”  
  
“Now I like the sound of that, mind you,” Mokuba stated thoughtfully, leaning back against the wall, apparently fully prepared to give due consideration to how to best punish the people who worked here. “Having them go through the sort of stuff that you and the other patients have to go through every day does have a lovely sort of cosmic irony to it, don’t get me wrong there. I do like it. But it doesn’t have the right amount of ‘umph’ to it, you know?”  
  
This was why he was going to leave the cruel creativity to Mokuba. He had this brilliant grasp on what was good, what was fitting, and what was needed. “Yeah, I guess,” he finally stated. If he sounded confused or hesitant, it was only because he was.  
  
“And I mean, I’ve given some thought over the years to what sort of horrible things we should do to Mazaki, but that list is a little dated. Give me a little while, and I’ll see if I can’t come up with a few good ideas. Especially if either of you has access to a band saw. That would really be helpful.”  
  
He chuckled. “Getting our hands on one of those might be a little tricky, you know. They don’t exactly like giving access to those to mental patients.”  
  
“I can work with a hacksaw!” Mokuba offered as a compromise. “Just don’t stifle my creativity here. Access to sharp objects is essential to about a third of the items on my current list.”  
  
“I’ll see what we can do.” It wasn’t a promise, but he would at least make the effort. That would have to be good enough.  
  
“I could get behind Bakura if he’s up for giving Mazaki some hell.”  
  
And there it was: the golden opportunity he hadn’t known he had been waiting on. “I would really like it if you and Bakura could be friends too.” He tried to sound nonchalant, but something told him he was failing miserably. That probably made it all the more suspicious to his already over vigilant little brother.  
  
“So want us to be friends?” Mokuba sounded an impossible mixture of scornful and amused. “Is this like wanting the family to like your new fiancé? Because, aww, niisama, that would be so sweet: you bringing the boyfriend home to meet the family.”  
  
“I’m – He’s not – Where did you – What – We’re not,” he sputtered, unable to manage to get a full sentence out. Mokuba had shocked the coherency right out of him. On the one hand, it wasn’t any real surprise. Mokuba had been doing that for years, after all. On the other hand, he would love to know where Mokuba got that sort of stuff.  
  
“Don’t try to tell me you’re not into that sort of stuff, niisama. I know you, remember? I’ve known you for a small slice of forever. You like him like _that_ , and we both know it. So what are you going to do about it?”  
  
“Me?” he squeaked in a way that was almost – no, that was terrified. He wasn’t about to question Mokuba’s assumption, though. Generally speaking, Mokuba knew what he was talking about in these sorts of situations, while he himself was utterly clueless. “Not a damn thing.”  
  
“Aww, ruin all my fun, why don’t you?” Mokuba whined.  
  
“It’s my prerogative as an older brother to do so,” he returned, regaining a bit of his composure. He might have even managed to sound a bit stuffy in the process, but that was all right too. That also might have fit with the whole big brother thing. He would have to ask Bakura later.  
  
Outside the window, which was just as grilled as Bakura had described them earlier, he could almost have sworn he heard something, something he couldn't say he had heard any time recently, if anywhere except on television. There weren't all that many dogs that came to the insane asylum, after all. He had found out early in his life that the therapy dogs tended to be dedicated more towards children's hospitals and prisons than towards where the crazies lived. People couldn't see the point, a lot of times, of wasting the valuable canines on people who probably couldn't be helped.   
  
This one sounded like a big dog, definitely not a terrier or anything small like that. If he had to guess, he would say a German Shepherd or something of a similar size. He didn't know breeds anyway, so trying to figure it out was a moot point. And it didn't sound all that close anyway. If anything, it had sounded a lot closer a few moments ago, back when Mokuba had still been trying to embarrass him into admitting something he wasn't comfortable with even thinking to himself.   
  
And while this had been a pleasing distraction from an embarrassing conversation, he knew he wasn't going to get much of a break. Mokuba wasn't going to give him that. "So, do you like him or what, niisama? You can tell me. I won't tell anyone. It's not like they talk to me anyway. So 'fess up! Do you like him or not?"  
  
He sighed softly. "Bakura's my friend. He's the first friend I can safely say I've ever had that wasn't you, Mokuba. I don't want to ruin that anytime soon. Besides, I've only known him, what, four days? That's hardly any time at all to get to know someone."  
  
"Yeah, I guess so," Mokuba conceded. He wore a hangdog expression for a brief moment, but then he grinned in a way that could only safely be called 'evil'. "So you want to get to know him better, eh, niisama? Why didn't you just say so then?" He laughed, and Kaiba found himself trying not to shiver in worry. "I'm sure I can arrange something."  
  
"That would go a lot better if the whole hospital didn't like to pretend you don't exist," he murmured. That alone was a relief in the matter. Mokuba couldn't cause too much trouble when people liked to think he wasn't even there. It should have been an amazing secret weapon, but thankfully, it wasn't. That alone was his saving grace on the topic. How odd... He could still hear the dog outside. It still sounded like it was miles away, but then again, maybe it was. Maybe someone who lived near the hospital had gotten a new dog or something. There was no reason for him to be suspicious of the sound. Now he was just being paranoid for no good reason at all. He shifted nervously on his bed, pulling his pillow into his lap and picking at the cloth. "You really think that? That I... like him like that?"   
  
"Do I think that?" Mokuba snorted and grinned. "Does Mazaki annoy the piss out of you? Does the sun rise in the east? Is rain wet? Hell, yes, I think that."   
  
"I'm not gay." At least, he was pretty sure he wasn't. In fact, he was fairly certain that he lacked any sort of sexuality at all. God knew he had never been attracted to a single person before.  
  
"Well, niisama, it's not like the pickings in here or at the orphanage have ever been all that great. And maybe tall and pale as hell is your type. Did you ever think of that?"  
  
"I'm not the Twilight fan here, you know," he protested, much to Mokuba's amusement. Apparently, that was worth a few dozen good giggles. Who would have thought it? Certainly not him. "And I'm not pursuing the matter or anything. I'm not risking the first friendship I've ever had, that wasn't with you, on the off chance that Bakura might be gay." Or on the off chance that he might be, for that matter. Mokuba still hadn't completely sold him on that one. "Why are you so set on this anyway, Mokuba?"  
  
The boy shrugged. "I just like seeing you happy, and you have been – very much so – with Bakura."  
  
"I've only known him three days."  
  
"And you've been happier the last three days than you have in years. Hell, niisama, I can't remember ever seeing you this happy, even before the orphanage." He stopped and scowled hard. "Especially not before the orphanage. Rat bastard of an uncle that we have."  
  
"Mokuba." The scolding was half-hearted at best. It was not like he had liked Gouzaburou either, but Mokuba flat out despised even the mere thought of him. It made him wonder why sometimes, what Mokuba might remember that he didn't, but he didn't want to push it, not now, not when he was currently in a fairly decent mood. He would have been in a lot better one, though, if Mokuba would lay off the hard questions.   
  
"Sorry. I didn't mean to bring it up." He grinned, and the older brother in Kaiba actually felt slightly afraid. "So what were you two whispering about when I snuck back in last night?"  
  
When Mokuba put it like that, it sounded like they had been doing something a bit higher rated than just talking. "Nothing. We were just talking."  
  
And the grin grew. "Ooh, about what? Dare I hope he was asking you to run away with him and leave this dreary existence? Because that would be kind of awesome, but very Regency Romance novel. I would have to do the 'only remaining family' disapproval and testing to make sure he's good enough for you. However, no offense, niisama, but you're a bit lacking in the heaving chest area."  
  
"I think I need to cut off your access to romance novels. You get way too enthused." He couldn't help chuckling in amusement though. Mokuba had a vivid imagination, one that more than made up for the lack of one he possessed. "He just wanted to know if it's possible to sneak out of here. Apparently, there's a full moon tonight that he wants to see."  
  
"And he asked you to come too?" Kaiba hesitated but then nodded. It was the truth, and they always tried to tell the truth between the two of them. "That's kind of sweet. Not exactly Regency Romance novel material, but really, I couldn't picture you in one of those anyway."  
  
"Good." And he meant it. This entire conversation was entirely too surreal for his tastes.   
  
"Are you going to go with him?"  
  
He shrugged. "I haven't given it a lot of thought." He paused, considering. "Maybe. It could be nice."   
  
"Do it, niisama," Mokuba cajoled. "Do it. You know you want to."  
  
"Maybe," he finally answered, taking a long moment to really give it thought.   
  
It wasn't like he could really remember what the moon looked like from the outside. He had spent too much of his life behind institution walls: here at the hospital and, before that, at the orphanage. From what little he remembered, his uncle Gouzaburou's home had not been much better than either of the places he had been since.   
  
Outside the walls, the sun seemed to be rising, based on the faint pink light trying to come through the grates on his window. Somewhere in that light, the dog he had been hearing most of the morning so far howled, the sound like death, like the poor creature was dying the minute the light hit it, as silly as that was to even think. He wondered to himself in a vague sense of curiosity just how far away this person who had acquired this dog lived and if it would be possible for him to get permission to go out and visit it. He hadn't had a pet before: it was not allowed here, nor had it been at the orphanage, and Gouzaburou would have died before allowing him to bring a dog into the man's house. The place had practically been a museum, and he had barely agreed to take Kaiba in when his parents died, for fear the boy would destroy some priceless artifact.   
  
Hmm, how odd. He had forgotten about that.  
  
"What are you thinking about so hard over there, niisama?" Mokuba questioned, tapping his hand against Kaiba's leg playfully. "You look like you're thinking way too hard."  
  
"That dog," he answered vaguely.  
  
Thankfully, Mokuba nodded. "Yeah, I heard it too. It sounded a bit like a hound, I guess. They howl like that -- or so I've read. Why?"  
  
He shook his head. "Nothing. I was just wondering who would have gotten a dog that was that loud."  
  
Mokuba laughed again. "I would! It sounds like it would be a really awesome dog, if it can howl that loudly! I mean, can you imagine the havoc it's playing on the people living around it, with all that howling? It would be awesome! When you get out of here, niisama, can we get one?"  
  
Now that was a nice, if unrealistic, thought: him getting out of here in this lifetime. The doctors were convinced his schizophrenia wasn't responding to treatment, so they weren't likely to let him out any time soon. If he told them about hearing the voices again recently, then they would just step up his treatment, and that would be that. He would eventually end up a drooling zombie, just like that particularly violent voice wanted, and it wouldn't be from the schizophrenia or an ice pick or anything. Instead, it would only be due to the vast amounts of drugs they were pumping into him. The result would be the same, no matter the methods.   
  
"If I ever get out of here, Mokuba, I'll buy us an entire pack of hounds," he promised, "each one bigger than the one next to it."  
  


* * *

  
  
"Good morning," Bakura greeted him. Again, he was waiting outside of Kaiba's room when he left for breakfast, and he immediately fell into step beside his friend as they headed towards the cafeteria. "Sleep well last night?"  
  
He nodded. "Yeah, I guess. You?"  
  
Bakura shrugged easily. "Yeah, pretty well. I thought I heard you up and about early this morning."  
  
Almost on cue, he felt heat warming his face. "I was up before dawn. I usually am. I didn't think I was being that loud." And he had thought that the soundproofing between the rooms was good enough to block out any noise he had been making.  
  
"You weren't." Bakura winked, leaning over to bump his shoulder against Kaiba's. When he spoke again, it was at little more than a whisper, like the white-haired man was confiding some deep, dark secret. "I snuck out last night. I was just slipping back in around dawn, and I heard you then. Don't tell on me, okay?"  
  
He couldn't help it: he was impressed. Bakura made it sound like it had all been so very easy, getting out of the building. "I won't breathe a word of it," he promised, automatically sliding into the chair facing the window again.  
  
Since Bakura had first arrived, they had fallen into a routine. They even sat in the same places every meal and during free time. He wouldn't have thought it was possible to get into a pattern so quickly, after barely four days around each other, but they had. They were into a pattern, and frankly, he liked it. He had always been fond of having a sense of order in his life, though that might have been instilled in him from the places he had grown up, and this was just about perfect in his book.   
  
Still, he did have a question, something that was vaguely bothering the back of his consciousness. "Did you hear the hound this morning?"  
  
And Bakura nearly started out of his seat with the way he jumped almost guiltily at the innocent question. "You heard him?" Kaiba nodded, a confused frown darkening his brow. He didn't see how it was possible to have not heard the animal. "He was why I slipped out. I wasn't expecting— I mean— The hound's mine. He followed me here."  
  
Now that he hadn't been expecting. "Really? He's yours?" Bakura nodded, still looking entirely too guilty for this to make any sort of sense to Kaiba, but at least that explained where the hound was. "Mokuba and I heard it, and we were talking about him. What kind of hound is he?"  
  
Bakura chuckled a little breathlessly. "He's a little hard to describe. Maybe he'll be back tonight, and you can meet him."  
  
Unexpectedly, that sent a grin across his face. "I would love that. What's his name?"  
  
"Gwyllgi." Kaiba frowned at the odd name, and Bakura chuckled, finally recovering his usual carefree temperament. "I know, I know: weird name. It just... fits him, you know. He’s part Gabriel Hound, so... yeah.”  
  
“Have any others?” Even if he were not curious himself, Mokuba would want to know. There was no way the boy wasn’t going to let information like that go without demanding more. He knew his little brother after all.  
  
“A few. I doubt they’ll show up here, though.”  
  
“Well, look at you, as thick as thieves.” He nearly started out of his seat at the sudden sound of Kawai’s voice behind him. “What are you boys up to?”  
  
The look on Bakura’s face very clearly translated into utter disbelief, likely at Kawai’s indomitably cheerful voice, to say nothing of her sudden appearance. Rather than find out what sort of choice answers the other man was thinking up, no matter how promising they looked to be from his expression, Kaiba answered almost calmly, “Just talking about stuff on the outside. Pets and stuff.”  
  
“Really?” She smiled broadly. “That’s good.” She redirected her attention back to Bakura. “There seems to be some sort of problem with your paperwork, Bakura. If you wouldn’t mind coming with me, we can get it straightened out. We—”   
  
“There isn’t any problem with it,” Bakura cut across her words, authority in his voice, like he was the doctor and she the patient. It was actually pretty impressive how quickly it silenced her as well. “You must have just looked at it wrong. It’s all in order.”  
  
Weirdly, just like that, Kawai smiled and nodded. “Of course. That must be the case. Sorry to have bothered you.”  
  
Now on that, he couldn't help but be impressed. "Now that was..." He trailed off, unable to think of a word to describe exactly what he was thinking. After all, Bakura had just said something completely opposite of what the young doctor had originally stated – only to have the doctor then turn around and agree with Bakura, as if that had been her intention all along.   
  
Bakura shrugged, grinning faintly. "Yeah, I know. It's a talent."  
  
"Think you can persuade them to get rid of this crap and start serving us real food?" It was only half a joke and half serious. He had been eating this junk for years, after all; he certainly wouldn't mind a real meal again.  
  
"I'll do you one better," Bakura returned with a suggestive wink, before turning his attention back to Kawai. "I'm going to take Seto here out for the evening. You got any problem with that?"  
  
She shook her head easily, her smile never even dimming. "Of course not." He could feel his eyes growing perilously large. "Do you need anything from me for that?"  
  
Bakura shrugged. "A written pass would be very nice. Oh, and before you go home for the day, drop off all the copies of our files to me. That would be very helpful, thank you."  
  
"Of course," she agreed again, turning on her heel and finally leaving the two of them alone.   
  
All he could do was stare for a long moment before he finally found his voice – and his pessimistic nature – again. "That was way too easy, you know. We're going to get in so much trouble."  
  
Bakura laughed, the sound surprising deep for his voice and entirely too carefree for their current location. Movement at the corner of his eye drew his attention, and he glanced behind him to see the other patients, every last one of them, staring at them, at Bakura, in rapt fascination. It didn't seem to affect his friend, though, so resolutely he pushed it to the back of his mind. Bakura was odd. He had known that practically from the moment he met the man. There was really nothing to do but accept it.   
  
"We won't get into any trouble," Bakura assured him. "I'll see to that." Again, he winked at Kaiba, this time reaching out to run a finger along his arm. He fought the urge to shiver or stare, and he felt he was mostly successful. "What do you say? Do you want to play the Great Escape with me tonight? I can fix it so neither of us have to come back here ever again."  
  
This... was entirely too similar to the conversation he had had earlier this morning with Mokuba. "As long as no Regency Romance novel plots start cropping up," he muttered mostly to himself.   
  
It seemed he was not as quiet as he could have been, because it brought another bout of laughter from the man sitting across the table from him. "Nope, I can promise that too: no Regency Romance novel plots. And may I say that I cannot picture you reading those, Seto?"  
  
He shrugged. "I don't. Mokuba reads everything he can get his hands on, though, even romance."  
  
"Smart kid. So we're on then?" Kaiba paused a long moment, giving it due thought. It would be nice to get out of here, and if Bakura could indeed arrange it so that there were no nasty repercussions, then he didn't see a downside to this. Finally, he nodded. "Good. Then I'll handle everything. Just be ready to leave at dark."  
  
He nodded. “I can do that.”  
  
Bakura leaned closer and beckoned him to do the same. When he spoke, his voice was nearly silent, barely loud enough for Kaiba to hear it even at that close proximity. “And you have to promise not to be too freaked by anything you see,” Bakura stated. “If you leave with me tonight, Seto, I can promise you a few things. You will never see the inside of an institution again. I will do everything in my power to give you whatever you want. But things will also be very, very different from this world and what you have seen in it. The world I live is run by very different rules. What you just saw with Kawai is the least of what I can do. So you have to be certain when you leave because there is no going back.”  
  
“What are you talking about, Bakura?” he whispered, his stomach sinking in a combination of fear and dread. Bakura sounded incredibly sane right now, but everything coming out of his mouth was beyond belief.  
  
“Just think about it. Let me know by this afternoon. But either way, I am leaving tonight, and I will not be back. I would prefer it if you were with me, so just... Just think about it.”  
  
Bakura pushed to his feet and was out of the room so quickly that he almost seemed to have disappeared.


	5. Chapter 5

In the roughly four days Bakura had been here, he could safely say that this was the _least_ he had seen of him. Presumably, he was getting things ready for tonight, but what did that entail exactly? If it were him, he would be taking the time to get rid of files and such, thoroughly erasing any hint of his presence here, but then what did he know? He wasn’t the... whatever Bakura was.  
  
And that was the question of the day, wasn’t it? If it hadn’t been for Bakura’s little demonstration, he might have thought the man even more mad than the situation had originally implied. And while the whole slitting wrists thing seemed to carry with it a sort of madness, there was that show-and-tell that had done a good bit to convince him that there was something else going on.  
  
But that just brought him back to the questions of what Bakura was, what he was planning, and what was really going on with him. Better still, why was Bakura, being whatever the hell he was, interested in him? After all, Bakura had come here and had taken the time to befriend him, before declaring he was about to leave. He had even offered to bring Kaiba with him wherever he was going, but why?  
  
And that was what he was having trouble figuring out. Why him? All he could come up with, the only possible reason he could determine, was the voices. That made less sense than the rest of this, though. Schizophrenics weren’t exactly a dime a dozen, but he certainly wasn’t the only one out there; he didn’t even have a typical case of the disease.  
  
So, once again, it came back to the same question: why?  
  
With Bakura gone wherever he was, he was suddenly very alone. Not even the orderlies were coming near him. At least he still had Mokuba. That was a relief.  
  
"So hit me, niisama. What are you thinking?" The boy was sitting on one of the cafeteria tables, swinging short legs back and forth. Normally, it would be a bit of a surprise to be allowed in here between meal times, but right now, it was actually no shock at all. "Any ideas on this one?"  
  
Slowly he shook his head. "Not a one. You're the creative one. What's your take on all of this?"  
  
Mokuba chuckled. "Where would you like me to start?" Thankfully it seemed to be a rhetorical question because he continued immediately instead of waiting for his older brother to try to come up with some sort of an answer. "So, he actually did ask you to run away with him? Which, I still have to say, is pretty damn sweet. But he said if you did, then things were going to get weird. And he, what, hypnotized one of the nurses?"  
  
"One of the doctors, actually," he corrected. "And he said that was 'the least of what he could do' or something like that."  
  
"Well, frankly, niisama, it sounds like you're leaving the realms of Regency Romance and moving into the perils of Paranormal Romance. Because mind control? That's pretty well on up there as far as I'm concerned. And if he says that's at the bottom of the list, then he's capable of some really amazing shit, niisama."  
  
He took a deep breath, actually a bit nervous about asking his next question. "Do you think he used it on me?"  
  
Mokuba paused, staring at him slack jawed. "What? Do you think that, niisama? Because if anyone's trying to whammy my niisama, I'm going to show them a world of hurt. Christ. Is it even possible?"  
  
"I don't know. That's the entire point." He roughly ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "I don't know anything about any of this. I have more questions than I have answers, not the least of which being why me. Out of all the people on the planet, why me?"  
  
Mokuba shook his head slowly. "I don't know, niisama. I really don't. I can say this: I do think you have been happier with Bakura than you have been in years, and that has to count for something. And I didn't see him slip the verbal roofies on your doctor, but he's been nothing but nice all the times I've met him. He seems to like you, and maybe that means something. Maybe it doesn't, though, and if that's the case, I know where to get my hands on a shiv. I can shank him for you, if you'd like."  
  
There really was nothing quite like the sound of family making death threats for you to brighten your day. "I don't want that to be. I don't want to think he -- what was the word? -- whammied me into liking him. It's a possibility, though."  
  
"So," Mokuba thought aloud, dragging the word out long as he pondered, "we have two possibilities. He might have mind-whammied you, in which case he's an asshole and you ditch him as soon as you can once you're out of here, or he didn't mind-whammy you and you're being paranoid, so you stick with him once you're out of here. Either way, I say take advantage of the chance to get out of here."  
  
"So either he's an asshole or I'm crazy." He chuckled darkly. "Well, one of those is proven fact already. I guess I go with option b: he hasn't whammied me, and I'm just being paranoid."  
  
"Or you could, you know, ask me," a familiar voice cut in from behind him. Damn it, why hadn't Mokuba told him Bakura was slipping up behind him?   
  
"'Bakura, are you possessing my mind and making me cluck like a chicken, or do you really actually want me to leave with you? Which one is it?'" He turned in time to see the white-haired man roll his eyes impressively. "Which one do you think, Seto?"  
  
"'Seto'?" Mokuba echoed.   
  
For once, he ignored his little brother talking though. "I don't know. I don't know anything about this. Why me?"  
  
"Here's another question for you then: why _not_ you?"  
  
Now that was something he wasn't quite prepared for. "Well, for starters, I'm crazy."  
  
Bakura shrugged. "So am I, if you didn't notice."  
  
"I mean, I hear voices on a semi-regular basis. One of them delights in telling me to kill myself."  
  
Oddly enough, the other man nodded in response to that. It didn't seem like agreement, though. Instead it seemed more like he was putting something to memory. "I'll deal with that shortly."  
  
"And you whammied the hell out of the doctor! I mean, what the hell? I don't even know what you are. Are you even human?"   
  
"Sometimes. Right now, in fact, I am. On an ongoing basis, though, no, not usually. It's a trifle restricting."  
  
He could almost swear he could hear Mokuba's eyes growing wider in their sockets at the answer. Rambling though it was, it was miles outside of anything he was prepared to deal with. "So if you aren't human, then what are you?"  
  
"Complicated. There's another question you're wanting to ask again. Go ahead and spit it out. You might actually get an answer to it."  
  
"Why me? If you're... whatever you are, why me?"  
  
Bakura sighed, hopping up to sit on a table opposite Mokuba, leaving him between the two of them and suddenly feeling like he was in the crossfire range. "How honest of an answer do you want on that? All the way?" Kaiba nodded a 'yes', and in turn, Bakura made another heavy sound. "I'm not too sure how well I can say this, but we found you because we need you. We need someone who can hear us. I came here to try to convince you to help us, but... I guess I got a bit sidetracked."  
  
"'Sidetracked'?" both he and Mokuba echoed as one. He sounded confused, while his little brother sounded belligerent.   
  
"Yeah. I wasn't expecting to find someone I could like when I went looking for you. I was expecting just another crazy, not someone who's intelligent and – if I may say it – very easy on the eyes. I get along well with you, and that's more than I can say for anyone in a long time. Usually I hate people, especially humans. No offense, but you people tend to get on my nerves."  
  
"I'm not exactly a people person myself, either, but still..." He trailed off, uncertain what he wanted to say exactly. "So you're not human, you didn't whammy me, and I sidetracked you. Is that about the gist of it?"  
  
Bakura shrugged. "More or less."  
  
"So do you actually like me, or is it just because I can 'hear' you or whatever?" He frowned. "And what does that mean anyway? I'm really not sure I'm following all of this or if I want to follow it."  
  
"First off, the explanation behind why we need people who can hear us is rather long and involved, and I'm not completely certain it's something we should get into right now. And secondly, I think I might be a little insulted. No, scratch that, I definitely am. Did I not just finish saying I like you more than I like your species in general? And I don't exactly toss out compliments left and right either. I mean, I'm not Atemu or anything." He blew out a breath hard, sounding more and more annoyed by the second. "Let me put this simply then. I like you, Kaiba Seto. I just like you. No ulterior motives behind that, not in the least. I haven't wanted anyone in a long, long time, but I can see that changing now." Behind him, Mokuba made a quietly cheerful squealing noise, like this was the best news he had overheard in years. "I would like you to come with me when I leave here tonight, Seto. I would like to get to know you better, in whatever way sounds best to you. But I don't want any mistakes between us. I do have a goal, and while it is hard to put into words, I do need your help on it. I don't want that to be the reason you come with me, if you decide to do so, but I will accept it. I will accept you however you want me: a ticket out of here, a friend, or something more. I'm leaving it in your hands from here on out."  
  
"One question," Kaiba blurted out as the other man stood to leave.   
  
"Yeah?" Bakura actually sounded tired, and that was actually a bit sad in a way.  
  
"If I leave with you, can Mokuba come too?"  
  
Bakura paused in front of him, studying him intently with those oddly pale eyes, before finally he nodded. "Of course. I have the feeling that wherever you go, Mokuba goes."  
  
"Then I'll go with you." Just saying it seemed to lift a huge weight from his shoulders, and it was a huge relief. "I'll definitely go with you. About the rest, though..."  
  
Bakura shook his head, lifting a careful hand to cup Kaiba's cheek. "You don't have to say anything about that now if you don't want to, Seto. I can understand if you aren't ready or anything."  
  
"That's the thing. I wouldn't know if I was ready or not. I don't know anything about being friends, much less anything else. Mokuba says we act like something out of a romance novel as it is, so I don't know what could be so different from here on out."  
  
"I'm sure I can come up with a few ideas," Bakura returned.  
  
"I'll second that one," Mokuba piped up. "Go for it, niisama!"  
  
It was going to be bad when the two of them really started teaming up on him. "All right. I can do this then. Just... I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, so go easy on me."  
  
That got a gigantic grin and a nod of nearly the same size from Bakura, as well as what sounded like crowing from his little brother. It was the white-haired man who spoke though. "All right. I can do that." Bakura lifted one of Kaiba's hands to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss to the wrist. "Just get your stuff together and wait for me here when it starts getting close to dark. I'll deal with everything at that point."  
  
He nodded. "Okay."   
  
"Okay," the white-haired man returned. "I need to finish getting things sorted out. I don't want there to be anyone from here looking for either of us once we're gone. I think we both need a clean break. Wouldn't you agree?"  
  
"Definitely."  
  
"So just take it easy until then, and once everything's settled, we'll get on our way."  
  
Bakura was gone again before he even remembered that he had had one more question to ask: where they were going.


	6. Chapter 6

He couldn't remember a day being even a third as long as this one had been, but it seemed to finally be winding to a close. He had a duffle bag packed and ready to go. Even if the bag wasn't his, he was going to go with it. After all, one of the orderlies had just pressed into his hands, almost like the man had been presenting a sacrifice, so he didn't think anyone would mind if he didn't bring it back. It was a little sad perhaps, how little material was actually in said bag: a change or two of clothes that he had picked up some years ago and managed to not outgrow, a few books that he had read often enough to lay claim to, and the set of Duel Monsters cards he and Mokuba had made. There was nothing else he could claim as his own.   
  
Maybe after this, he could change that. Develop a few things that were just his, at least enough to fill the bag. That was his first goal. He wanted to at least fill this one duffle bag with things that only belonged to him. Mokuba had his own small bag of belongings, and it seemed to be in a similar sorry state. That too they would deal with, once the time was right.   
  
He had spent the rest of the day left to his own devices. Now that he no longer had a huge decision hanging over his head, he had time to finish getting things ready. It hadn't taken as long as he had been expecting, but then he had never left except to go from one institution to the next before. This was already promising to be a change.  
  
He had his bag sitting in the chair next to his as he waited patiently in the cafeteria for Bakura to return. It couldn't be much longer until dark by this point. Now all he had to do was wait for Bakura to show up. Something told him that that would not be much longer. The shadows were getting long through the window and were starting to fade away; the sun was starting to go down, so it was almost time. Now that it was almost upon him, he couldn't remember having ever felt this excited about anything in his entire life. A chance to get out of here? And then a chance to pursue... whatever it was he was building with Bakura? Life wasn't supposed to get this good this fast. Hell, he was almost waiting for the group of people to jump out from behind something and yell something about it being a surprise and all a big joke. Good things just didn't happen to him. It went completely against the laws of his life.  
  
He wasn't going to complain, though, if something good actually did occur. Just... He was understandably a bit nervous, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He had a feeling that it was going to come in the form of why 'they,' whoever 'they were aside from Bakura, wanted him around. He knew it was because he could hear them, which was apparently yet another conversation too complicated to deal with right now. He couldn't say he was digging that too much. But he could and would deal with it. He was pretty good at dealing with things, if he did say so himself.  
  
"You're looking ready to go," Bakura's voice commented from behind him. Somehow he managed not to jump. How did Bakura do that anyway, just showing up like that without making a bit of noise? Maybe it tied into the whole 'not human' thing. It would make sense, looking at it that way. "One might be inclined to think you've been waiting to make a jailbreak for quite some time."  
  
He shook his head. "It never would have occurred to me." It was the sad but honest truth. He just wasn't the type to think outside the box. He usually let Mokuba or the voices do that for him. "Are we headed out now?"  
  
Bakura nodded. "We are. So let's get out of here."  
  
They were out the cafeteria door and walking the hallways towards the front door before he finally noticed that one person here wasn't carrying a bag. "You didn't have anything with you?"  
  
Bakura shook his head. "Nope. Just the clothes on my back, as they say. " He glanced down at Kaiba's duffle. "Is that all you have?" He nodded, and the white-haired man made a soft humming sound. "We'll have to take care of that as well."  
  
He snickered quietly to himself. "We ought to be making a list at the rate we're coming up with ideas of things that need to be taken care of."  
  
"I've got a pretty good memory. I need to smite Mazaki, deal with the rampant stupidity of the staff here, have words with a certain someone regarding death threats, and buy you stuff. It's not that long a list yet. It very well could become one, but I think we're okay for now."  
  
They finally reached the doors leading to the outside. As usual for this time in the evening, one security guard stood station near it; another would be walking the halls. He had no idea what Bakura had in mind for security. That was a bit nerve wracking... until it turned out that apparently the guards were either on their side or whammied. The one at the exit just opened the door for them like some sort of butler or something.  
  
And then they were outside, like there was nothing to it, like people just strolled out of mental hospitals all the time, whenever they felt like it. This was... It was something else all together different from anything else he had ever experienced before in his life. Well, Bakura had promised that his life would be nothing like it had been before, and so far he was holding true to that.  
  
The sun was definitely all the way down when they strolled to a stop just outside the hospital's grounds. "So now what?" he finally asked.  
  
Bakura chuckled. "This." He let out a loud whistle that seemed to split the air around them. He had to fight the urge to cover his ears at the sudden, incredibly loud sound, only to have it repeat itself again.  
  
Less than a second later, a howl echoed oddly loud, like the dog was right on top of them. He glanced around with as much subtlety as he dared but saw no animal. The howl kept repeating itself, gradually growing more and more faint... until a creature the side of a small horse planted paws on Bakura's shoulders. Even standing on its hind legs and leaning up against the white-haired man, the creature still seemed ungodly huge. He supposed it made sense that way, though: if Bakura were something other than human, why would he have a perfectly human pet (even if he was interested in a perfectly human person)?   
  
He didn't know much about dogs, but this thing bore little resemblance to what he pictured hounds looking like. Instead, it looked more like a mastiff of some sort: a massive dog with a thick head, a burly body, and jaws that looked... well, formidable was a nice was of phrasing it. It looked capable of biting him in half with little effort if it got hungry enough.   
  
Bakura had said it was part Gabriel hound, whatever that meant. Even with the new freedom he had been receiving in the hospital, there still wasn't that much access to the Internet, and other methods of research were a little slim. If it wasn't on television or in one of the few books lying about, then there hadn't been a chance to read up on it. Gabriel hounds were in nothing he had had access to. He was going to make an educated guess though. He was going to guess that a Gabriel hound was some sort of creature, making this dog a bit... more... than other dogs. Well, that certainly explained the size, as well as the howls, how it had sounded close when it was further away but quieter when it was up close.   
  
"Gwyllgi," Bakura eventually scolded, "don't be impolite." He shoved the huge animal off of him like it was no bigger than a terrier, and he nodded in Kaiba's direction. "Seto here will be coming with us. _Be polite_."  
  
Bakura spoke to the dog like it was intelligent, so maybe he should do likewise. "Good evening," he finally settled for.  
  
"Oh, good grief!" a sickeningly familiar voice cut across the darkness. "Now we're doing doggy meet and greet? Don't we have better things to be doing?"  
  
He knew that voice. He would know that voice anywhere. Whatever else he could say about himself, he did have a tendency to remember the voices that told him to kill himself. This was one of them. In fact, this was the most recent one, the one that thought it would be funny to have someone use an ice pick to turn him into a drooling vegetable.   
  
Bakura rolled his eyes, and the dog let out a quiet huff, as if it too were utterly unimpressed by the new addition. "Malik," the white-haired man drawled. "So glad to hear you could join us."  
  
Literally out of nowhere, a young man appeared before him. He was about the same height as Bakura, maybe a little taller, so definitely shorter than he himself was, but somehow that didn't seem to matter. Like Bakura, there was a feeling of 'old' and 'powerful' to him, but he was not playing it as subtly as Bakura. In fact, he seemed to wear it right out on his sleeve, like anyone who saw him should know right up front that they were dealing with something more than human.   
  
Like Bakura, there was something altogether otherworldly about the man's appearance. It was nearly the opposite in appearance, though: Bakura was pale as a ghost, while this Malik person was darkly tanned; Bakura had lightly colored eyes that he still couldn't decide the color of, while Malik's were a bright and vivid purple; Bakura's hair was long, shaggy, and brilliantly white, while Malik's was neatly style and a shade of blond he had only ever seen come out of bottles. He didn't even do subtle in his clothing, what with the chains and the purple vest-like shirt and all.   
  
"You dragged me all the way out here to bitch at me for being late? Seriously? You?" Malik rolled his eyes and sighed overly dramatically. If he had seen it on television, he might have even had to have laughed at the overdone performance. "That's rich. That's really damn rich, coming off you. So what's the plan, since you decided we have one now?"  
  
"We head back. Seto's coming with us."  
  
It was almost comical how high Malik's eyebrows shot and how wide his eyes grew. "You talked him in to coming back with us?" He sounded entirely too incredulous, and for some reason, that actually loosened Kaiba's tongue.  
  
"It's amazing what _not_ threatening someone will do for persuasion." Behind him, he could even hear Mokuba cheer very quietly.   
  
To his side, though, Bakura sounded like he was about to start howling in laughter himself. "He has a point."  
  
"Whatever. Let's get out of here. We've been away too long as it is."  
  
Without another word, Malik literally vanished into thin air, leaving no sign that he had ever been there but the dust moving in his wake. That was both enlightening and terrifying at the same time, he thought to himself. People vanishing into thin air? That he could almost deal with. It was the rest of the stuff about Malik that pinged off his every nerve wrong.   
  
"Well," he started to say but then trailed off. There was literally nothing he could think of to say. He had been considering making a comment about people coming and going so quickly here, but somehow it seemed less than appropriate for the moment.   
  
Bakura stepped a little closer to him, giving him a glance over to see if he was all right. "Malik is something of an acquired taste."  
  
What would Mokuba say in a situation like this? He started to look over his shoulder and just ask, when suddenly it occurred to him exactly what it would be. "Rather like arsenic in that way, I suppose," he commented dryly.   
  
"And you've just described Malik to perfection."  
  
"I think you need to start telling me what's going on," he suggested, trying his best not to make it sound like a demand. "I mean, Malik alone..."  
  
The white-haired man nodded. "Of course. Just... Not here, all right? It's a little bit more open than I would like. So, do you mind if we head out of here and I'll tell you elsewhere?"  
  
He paused, thinking it over a brief moment before agreeing. "We can do that. As long as the explanation is only elsewhere and not else _when_."  
  
"All right. Hold on."   
  
In a split second, the world blinked out around him. In that time, everything was completely black and seemed to spin on its own axis. He could feel his stomach lurching, like they were falling out of an airplane, and there was nothing beneath him, so it was probably a pretty good comparison. It didn't seem right or natural at all, but thankfully, it was over quickly.  
  
When he opened eyes that he didn't remember squeezing tightly shut, he was inside again. This definitely wasn't anywhere like any place he had ever seen before. Even his uncle's home did not compare for opulence or size, but there seemed to be an odd homey feeling to the place. It was as if everything in here was older than dirt but well loved and cared for. If the terror he had of breaking anything at his uncle's home had been bad, he was going to go stark raving mad trying not to be accidentally destructive in here. Each piece probably cost more than his life was worth.  
  
"Where are we?" He gasped out each word as its own question, willing the nausea to pass and the dizziness to abate. Sadly, it didn't seem to be any time soon.  
  
"There's a couch behind you," Bakura advised. "Take a load off." Without further word, Bakura crossed the room to pull closed a door that he hadn't even seen. Gwyllgi sank down on a rug that had seen better days, circling a few times to make himself comfortable before relaxing. For all the world, the gigantic dog looked like a bodyguard settling into place, and that might have been something he wanted to keep in mind.   
  
"Thanks," he commented quietly, taking the proffered seat. "So?" He let himself trail off with that, leaving it perfectly obviously that he wanted that explanation and he wanted it now. "Tell me."  
  
Bakura raked a hand through his hair. This was appearing more and more like a nervous habit of some sort, which should have been amusing, seeing as how Bakura clearly was not human. "I don't really know where to start." He gave it a couple of seconds, long enough for Bakura to try to gather his thoughts. He was about to prompt the other man again when he finally continued. "I guess the beginning is probably a pretty good place, right?" He nodded, remaining silent, in case Bakura wouldn't go on if he talked. "You can hear us."  
  
"You said that already." He tried to keep his voice down, rather than announce to all and sundry who might have been out there listening, but it was a challenge. A lot of things about this whole situation did in fact seem to be a difficulty for him.   
  
The white-haired man shook his head. Really, he needed to quit thinking of Bakura as a man. He was male, yes, but he wasn't a man, simply because he wasn't human. "There aren't that many people out there who can hear us. It seems like there are less and less every year." He dropped down into an oversized chair opposite Kaiba, making himself comfortable. "Not every schizophrenic can hear us. Only a select few can, apparently, and you're one of them."  
  
"So I guess the obvious question now is, so what _are_ you, that it makes such a difference whether or not someone can 'hear' you?"  
  
"We don't always talk out loud." The words had the air of a confession, but he wasn't stepping away from it yet. He had to know, which meant Bakura had to tell him. "In fact, we very rarely do. It's very imprecise compared to speaking mind to mind. That's what you were hearing just before I arrived: Malik and I talking."  
  
"Why did he want me to kill myself anyway?" he questioned. "Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of my being able to hear you?"  
  
"In theory," Bakura conceded, "but that's not always the case. Yes, generally, if someone can hear us, we would rather whisk them away and keep them, rather than anything less than pleasant. But sometimes that's not always a choice." He leaned a bit forward, elbows resting on his knees, as if he were preparing to tell Kaiba some big secret. "A few of us have never even seen one of the Listeners, but at this point, we're desperate." He inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly, obviously trying to regain some of the calm he had been exhibiting earlier. "The listeners are so rare that we have to either keep them safe or keep them from being picked up by someone less than savory."  
  
"How do you mean?" He was seriously not liking the sound of all of this planning and the listening and what could possibly be done with people like him, what might have been done to _him_ if Bakura hadn’t decided he liked him.  
  
"We're in a war, Seto. We've been in a war longer than most people you know have been alive. Right now, it's at a stalemate; neither side is scoring. Sometimes we lose a fight, and sometimes we win one. We need a weapon to help us pull through.”  
  
It was hard to keep a very Mokuba-like growl out of his voice. "And that's the listeners, people like me. We're your new weapon."  
  
Bakura actually looked pained, but nonetheless, he answered; the response even seemed to be honest, though he could admit that he probably wasn't the best judge on honesty in situations like this. "Yes, you are." He could give Bakura credit for telling him what sounded like the truth, even if the man – whatever he was – didn't seem to be enjoying telling it. "There's a running theory that if the listeners can hear us, then maybe you can hear them as well. And we have to know what they're planning ahead of time. We've been pulling too close as it was. It's been too close the last few skirmishes, and frankly, I think I would prefer it if a few less of my comrades are killed."  
  
It seemed as good an opening as any. "So what am I dealing with? And I want to know everything this time."  
  
Bakura slouched back hard in the overstuffed chair, seemingly a bit overwhelmed by the question, the demand, or both. He was silent a long moment as he visibly appeared to be organizing his thoughts. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded resigned. "We've been at war for millennia, longer than humans have recorded their own history – longer than any of us care to remember. Sometimes we pull a little ahead, but lately, it seems like the daeva have us bent over a barrel. We've been being killed left and right, and frankly, there aren't enough of us left to win this without some sort of an ace in the hole." He gestured weakly in Kaiba's direction. "That's where the listeners come in. If we can find out what the daeva are planning ahead of time, maybe we can at least avoid being murdered outright, if not possibly even manage to get the jump on them and thin their numbers down a bit." He didn't appear to be too hopeful of this working. In fact, for all the world, it sounded like it was a plan someone else had come up with and he was only reluctantly going along with it. Surprisingly, he even confirmed it. "I don't think it stands much of a chance, but we're running low on ideas at this point."  
  
"Two questions then."  
  
"'What are the daeva?'" Bakura guessed.  
  
He nodded. "And what are you?" It was a good deal more blunt that he ever wanted to be, but there was no real way of easing around this topic. It had to be addressed bluntly or not at all, and frankly, they were too far beyond the point where 'not at all' would be acceptable.  
  
"Ah, the hard questions," Bakura surmised with a tired exhalation. "The daeva are... We had no idea what they were when they first appeared. Some of us called them demons, while others of us called them monsters. We didn't have a real name for them until Ahura Mazda gave them that one. Apparently, to his people, it means 'other' or something like that. I guess it works: they aren't animals, they aren't human, they aren't one of us, and they aren't a mixture of us and human – so I suppose that does leave 'other'." He sighed again, allowing his head to lean backward so that he was staring at the ceiling instead of Kaiba. "As for what we are... That's both harder and easier. You got the part where we're not human?"  
  
He had to chuckle quietly at that. "Yeah, I definitely noticed that part, with the whole mind control thing and where that Malik guy kept vanishing and reappearing." He almost wished he had some sort of creativity. Maybe then he might have been able to make an educated guess on what these people might have been, but for now, he was drawing a blank.   
  
"We're gods."


	7. Chapter 7

The words had been stated so baldly, the tone so matter of fact, that he couldn't even find it in himself to call bullshit on the statement. It might have been easier to swallow if Bakura would have at least been willing to meet his eyes, but instead he kept his head tilted back and his pale eyes locked on the ceiling above them.  
  
"Gods?" he repeated. "Really?"  
  
"Maybe I should have said that we _were_ gods. Very few of us are worshipped anymore. Without belief, we aren't as strong as we used to be."  
  
God, some small part of him was just waiting for someone to jump out from behind the door or something and yell 'psych' or something – something so that he didn't have to try to process news like that. "Gods..." That was the part he was having trouble with, not that everything here wasn't hard to swallow. That part was just particularly hard to swallow. Okay, if that was what Bakura was, then... " _Who_ are you?"  
  
Bakura shrugged. "I've had a lot of names over the years. Hades or Pluto might be one you recognize." And he wasn't going to choke at hearing something like that. "Gwynn ap Nudd was one of my firsts and has always my favorite. I like 'Bakura' best now."  
  
He didn't actually know that much about mythology, but something about the name Hades did stick out in his memory. "Hades? Like the god of hell?"   
  
That finally got Bakura willing to meet his eyes. "The Otherworld is not hell. It's just where souls go when they die, good or bad. It's the same with a lot of the other underworlds. There are only a few where people go to get punished, and frankly I've been too busy to be in the punishment game lately."  
  
An odd thought occurred to him. "What about your sister? Is she real?"  
  
And at that Bakura finally laughed. "Amane? Yeah, she's real. Like me, she's living under an assumed name, but she's still around. We're not actually blood siblings, but we death gods tend to stick together. Not too many people like us after all."  
  
It made some sort of sense, he supposed. No one wanted to be reminded that they could and would die, and a death god would be a walking reminder of that. No wonder they stuck together. Maybe it was his lacking knowledge of mythology, but he was sort of striking out on trying to think of any female death god – err, goddesses. But that was a question he could best save until later.  
  
"So why are you," _you gods_ , "at war with these..." He trailed off, not completely certain of getting the name right.  
  
"The daevas. When they first started appearing, we thought it was just another pantheon making themselves known. It wouldn't have been the first time, and they played right into that. They made us think that they were one of us... right up until the point where they slaughtered Osiris." He sighed. "Even then, I guess we were all in shock. I mean, it's hard to kill one of us, and they made it look easy." Another sigh. "They still make it look easy."  
  
"How long has this war been going on?" It seemed like something could be important.  
  
At that, Bakura paused, looking away. He could watch the white-haired god's lips move silently as he obviously pondered the answer to that. "Since they killed Osiris," he finally declared, though by no means did he sound absolutely certain. "That has to have been about six or seven thousand years ago."  
  
Six or seven thousand years ago... Bakura made that sound like a stretch of time no longer than a few weeks. The reality of it was beyond his comprehension, though. Bakura _had_ said ‘millennia’ before, but somehow it had seemed like exaggeration before. Now, for it to be so casually stated, that just confirmed it as fact.  
  
"So where are we now?" he asked, breaking the long silence. Really, he had tons of other questions, but he was going to make this be the last one. Surely Bakura had much better things to do than sit around here and answer questions from him. From the way Malik had spoken, Bakura seemed to be fairly important to this war.  
  
"Annwn." At Kaiba's apparent confusion, he elaborated: "The Otherworld, at least the Welsh-Celtic version of it. The daeva haven't found it yet, so it's our safety zone. Our base of operations, I guess is the best way to put it. We've been hiding out in the realms of the dead for the last century or so, because it's one of the last places anyone would think to look for us. No one – not even the gods – like the death realms."   
  
Except the death gods, he concluded, though he kept his thoughts to himself. At least, he assumed they were still private. If he could hear them talking, then maybe the reverse was also true: maybe they could hear him thinking. Now that was a scary thought. He didn't like the idea of anyone messing around in his mind, even someone he provisionally liked. If he didn’t like the mere idea of Mokuba being possibly reading his mind, then there was no way in hell he was going to be comfortable with the thought that complete strangers here might be able to take glances in on him.  
  
"I guess that makes sense," he offered.   
  
"They gutted the Greek underworld." Bakura's voice itself sounded gutted, and without letting himself put too much thought into it, he pushed himself to his feet, quickly crossing the few steps between them and knelt at Bakura's feet. He didn't even let himself stop from reaching out and placing a hand on Bakura's knee. He didn't know much about offering comfort, but this seemed like it was a good thing.  
  
Maybe better than good, he thought abruptly a few seconds later. If he had needed proof still that Bakura was more than human, his reflexes would have been the biggest clue ever. He hadn't even seen or heard the man move before he found himself sitting across his lap, legs dangling over the side of the chair. He was miles stronger than a man of his height and apparent lack of muscle mass should have been Bakura was oddly silent, though. He felt comfortable, however, with this silence. If there were secrets to this silence, they were ones that didn't apply to him.   
  
He let Bakura hold him for a long moment before he decided to speak again, trying for a small smile. "You know, I don't remember my mythology all that great, but I do seem to remember something about a Persephone." That got Bakura's attention solely focused on him, and this time the grin he was wearing for Bakura was real. "I don't have someone I've got to worry about being jealous of me, do I?"  
  
The white-haired man let out a laugh. Much like the one in the cafeteria, there was something odd and special about it. He was starting to get the feeling that this was the kind of laugh Bakura made when he was truly pleased by something, as opposed to just being amused. "You don't have anyone to worry about. Both Mana and Mai are here for their own good, not because I wanted them." He chuckled briefly. "I do seem to have a habit of kidnapping and collecting people, though, don't I?"  
  
"Going from little I remember of the myths, yeah." Two? Wait, no, Bakura had said that he was Hades, Pluto, and another god; that name he wasn't even going to try to pronounce. Maybe it had something to do with that. "So am I being collected or—"  
  
He cut himself off as soft lips brushed against his own. It was barely enough to be called a kiss – and it was a dirty way to derail his train of thoughts.   
  
"Yes, you have been collected, Seto, and I'm not intending on letting you go. Not now." His voice was starting to turn sad, and Kaiba couldn't say he liked that. He preferred Bakura at least a bit cheerful. "I've been alone too long to let someone like you go now."  
  
That word floated back up through his mind: 'millennia'. That was a long time to be alone, he thought drearily to himself. Well, if he had his way, that was never going to be the case again. Not for him, not for Bakura.   
  
"I guess I can live with that," he quipped quietly, the words coming to him surprisingly both easily and quickly. He paused, pretending to take a moment to consider this. "Yeah, I can definitely live with that."  
  
"Good" was all Bakura replied, not moving in the least to let him go. If anything, he was being held tighter, closer, more intimately than he had been before.   
  
That was... confusing to him. He didn't know much about mythology; it had never been a topic that had been of any real interest to him before; but it didn't make a lot of sense for a god to be so lonely. Maybe it should have, though. Bakura was a death god, after all, and by his own admission, not even the other gods cared much for them... except apparently to use their realms in times of need. That bothered him, almost as much as the idea of Bakura being lonely. If he were one of them, he would have been having words with the whole lot of them about that.   
  
What he did remember of mythology, which admittedly was not all that much, just what came up on television on occasion and stories he vaguely remembered his uncle telling guests, at least the Greek gods had been very humanlike, with very human failings and vices. Bakura had said at one point that he had been a Greek god, Hades to be exact, so perhaps... Maybe they weren't all that different from humans: just extremely long-lived and powerful. That he could wrap his mind around better. It made them into something vaguely more approachable in his mind. If he was going to be working with them to try to win their war against the daevas, then he needed to be able to be around some of them besides Bakura.   
  
He had only met one other of them before, at least face-to-face: that weird guy Malik. It stood to reason that Malik was a god as well, though he didn't want to even think too much about who Malik might have been. As casually cruel as the blond man had been, as easily as he radiated hostility, maybe he had something to do with war or fighting or something. He couldn't fathom a guess beyond that, though. He simply didn't know enough to try.   
  
In the meanwhile, though, perhaps it was best if he just thought of Malik as another man, if he thought of him as just 'Malik'. He certainly didn't want to start thinking of anyone as 'the god of' whatever. That was simply too overwhelming for him for right now. Maybe once he had had time to get used to the idea and all, maybe then he could start trying to process all of them. For now, though, procrastination and denial seemed the best ways to go. That way, he could deal and perhaps even be useful.  
  
There was a soft tap at the door, one that sounded entirely too restrained to have been the only other god he knew here, interrupted the quiet moment. Bakura heaved an annoyed sigh and a sound that might have almost been a growl. "Who is it?" he called just loudly enough to be heard. What he _didn't_ do was move in any way or let go of the man in his arms.   
  
Frankly, he wasn't too sure about the prospect of meeting someone new while sitting in Bakura's lap. He wasn't sure what sort of picture it was going to send out, but he was fairly certain it wasn't one he wanted to be remembered by in a group like this. At the same time, though, he was awfully comfortable and Bakura's arms around him felt so good.  
  
The door opened with a quiet whisper of sound, just barely enough to be heard. Both he and Bakura were facing away from the door, but he at least had a good enough angle to see a young woman with long curly black hair slipping in the door, closing it quickly and quietly behind her. "Just me," she commented, her voice little more than a whisper.  
  
"Amane," Bakura returned.  
  
So this was Bakura's pseudo-sister. It was immediately obvious that they were in no way blood related. For starters, they looked nothing alike. Where Bakura was all shades of light and white, Amane was darkness: black hair, dark blue eyes, dark clothing. The only thing they seemed to have in common was the pale shade of their skin. Maybe that was something all death gods had. Most death realms, from his tenuous grasp on mythology, were hidden away in caves and underground, and death gods rarely strayed from their realms in the myths, so maybe it made sense that they would all have been pale.  
  
"Malik told me you were back," she stated softly. It was odd, but she didn't seem capable of loud speech, or maybe she just preferred to hold herself in moderation. "I'm glad to hear you returned both unharmed and successful." The smile she offered Kaiba was a flash of too sharp teeth that seemed a bit too feral for his safety. "You must be the listener my brother was sent to retrieve. I'm Amane."  
  
He accepted the hand she offered, making no effort to rise from where Bakura had placed him earlier. "Kaiba," he returned. No one else here seemed to use more than one name, so it was perhaps best for him to likewise restrain himself. It took a moment, but he did remember to press forward with some of the manners he had picked up from Mokuba. "I'm pleased to meet you."  
  
This time, her smile seemed more genuine, though still dangerous, as she sank down into the same spot on the couch he himself had occupied until a few moments ago. "I'm glad to hear this. I feel likewise. It's good to see my brother a bit less gloomy."  
  
"I'm still here, you know," Bakura groused. He did not seem to be too annoyed, however. "Don't talk about me like I can't hear you."  
  
"But it's ever so much fun, brother." She offered Kaiba another smile. Each one had been a little different than the one before. This one bordered on actually being friendly. "I do hope you will stay with us a while, Kaiba."  
  
Why did that make him a little nervous? He decided to go with his gut for once, and so he answered carefully. "I hope to," he replied.   
  
Bakura's grip on him tightened briefly into something very much like a possessive hug. "Seto will be sticking around." He said it as if it were a bald-faced fact, like there was no arguing with it once he pronounced it.   
  
Amane nodded. "Very good. I'm quite pleased to hear that. I should go, in that case, and make certain that Malik knows this. Maybe this way, he will cease his whining and let us plan a bit." She stood, smoothing down the black dress she wore, and focused all her attention once more on Bakura. "Jounouchi and Atemu seem to have had similar luck with acquiring listeners as well, if the rumor mill proves to be truth for once. I cannot help but think this is a good thing."  
  
When Bakura finally answered slowly, his voice sounded like it was all business. He glanced over his shoulder at the man, and he couldn't help being a little surprised at how serious he appeared to be. It was probably wrong of him to think that the person he had known before was Bakura, while this was Hades/Pluto/that other god; it was that startling a difference at least, like they were almost two different people in the same body. He would have said that it was the difference between the relaxed Bakura he had known to date and a more serious Bakura, but that otherworldly power had seemed to grow around him as well as he had spoken. He preferred his original theory at this point.  
  
"That's good. I suppose then we should hope that this ridiculous plan of Atemu's actually is worth a damn."   
"Perhaps it will be. It would be a nice change of pace, would it not?" Amane turned to look down at Kaiba again and offered in a conspiratorial whisper, "Brother does not get along with Atemu. To be truthful, few of us do."  
"And that probably has something to do with the stick up his ass," Bakura groused. "The man's one of the few All Fathers who have survived this long, not the Second Coming of Osiris or anything. One of these days, his mouth and ego are going to write a check that his body and powers cannot cash – and I'm going to laugh my ass off when that happens. I might even sell tickets. It's going to be great, I'm telling you."  
  
Obviously, Bakura really didn't like this Atemu guy. He couldn't remember ever hearing anyone talk about someone they worked with like that before, even some of the orderlies at the hospital or, worse, some of his uncle's servants in regards to his uncle. He had heard some venom tossed around before, but that might have taken the cake.  
  
He listened politely while Bakura and Amane made their goodbyes and until Amane was out the door with it closed once more behind her before he asked the question currently raging through his mind: "So why don't you like this Atemu guy?"  
  
Bakura actually growled again. "I don't _hate_ him. No, I _despise_ him. He joined the fight late, and that's probably why he's one of the only All Fathers still around. It's certainly not because he's that great of a fighter or anything. It's just that... all the luck seems to flow his way the minute he starts doing anything. He'll be fighting, and the daeva's sword will break. A daeva will attack at him, and the attack will go right by him. It's uncanny, even for one of us. I've never seen anything like it. No one has, and it's given him a big head apparently. He's going to have to start greasing it soon to get it through doors. Plus..." Bakura trailed off.  
  
Curiosity peaked, he prompted, "'Plus'?"  
  
"Plus, rumor has it he either ran off or killed the underworld god of his pantheon. The rumor mill even has it that he might have killed him off personally. I know he has not made a habit of being nice or even polite to Amane or me. There aren't too many left after we're gone."  
  
"I would prefer," he stated archly, "that you were _not_ 'gone'. Amane and Malik are the only two people I know here, and no offense to your sister, but Malik did seem to want me dead; I'm not sure how successful she would be at stopping him."  
  
"Oh, you'd be surprised. Amane has a particular talent when it comes to Malik. All she has to do is threaten to cut him off."  
  
"Okay, wait, obviously I'm hearing wrong. You didn't just imply that your sister is sleeping with that Malik guy... did you?"  
  
Bakura chuckled. "It blew my mind too the first time I heard the news. They do seem like opposites, don't they?" He nodded numbly, still in shock from trying to even picture a quiet, restrained person like Amane with someone as brash and crude as Malik. "Apparently, from what she tells me, Malik reminds her a great deal of her brothers. Two of them at least. Her blood brothers, of course. I'm nothing like Malik most of the time..." He paused again, obviously considering what he was saying. "Unless Atemu is involved."  
  
"Should I ask who her brothers are?" Somehow he was actually sort of dreading the answer. "Are they here? Will I be meeting them?"  
  
He was actually a little relieved when Bakura shook his head. "No, they're not here. They're not dead or anything, I'm told, but they're some of the gods that can't be released to join the battle, not until things get really, really dire."  
  
That didn't sound good. "What kind of dire would it have to be for them to be released?"  
  
Bakura took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. "It would have to be the kind of dire where we would rather end the world than hand it over to the daeva. I don't think we're to that point just yet. I really hope, actually, we can head this thing off before it gets to that point."  
  
Yeah, if the choices were release some apocalyptic deities to destroy their earth or wait a bit yet, yeah, he kind of hoped it never came to that point either. "I'll second that," he nearly choked out. "I think I can speak for a lot of people when I say I prefer being alive at this point, especially compared to the world blowing up."  
  
"More like an eternal winter, but that's beside the point. We're trying to hold off on killing the planet just yet, and who knows what the daeva have in mind for it? All that can be certain is that it would be horrible. Humans would either be wiped out or end up wishing that they had been, whichever is the more frightening fate." He released a breath heavily. "That's why we have decided that Fenrir and Jörmungandr are going to be held in reserve. I think ending the world would be the preferable outcome if it comes to us losing. It isn't a decision we arrived at lightly either," he continued quickly, as if he sensed the question Kaiba had been about to ask. "It's our final ace in the hole, only to be done if we've been wiped out."  
  
"How?" He couldn't help it if he sounded skeptical. This was all a little bit above his pay grade. Maybe if he knew the myths and had a basic idea what to build upon, maybe then this would all be coming more easily, but as it was, his mind just couldn't wrap around any of this.  
  
"We have spells set in place. When the last one of us is killed, when there are no more gods to hold the line between the daevas and humans, then the bonds on Fenrir and Jörmungandr will break. If we've done our job right, even Loki will be released, as well as every horrible thing any of us have ever held captive. These things will either kill the daeva or end the world. Either way, it will be better for humans than what the daeva will do."  
So it... this thing wasn't about the gods wanting to take out these daevas for their own purposes or because the daeva were slaughtering them. The real answer was there, buried in Bakura's words, spoken no doubt without realization but with truth. This losing battle they were fighting against the daeva was to keep the daevas from humans. It wasn't something he had ever thought of before: that there might be something out there keeping humans safe from something too horrible to think about. After all, he left the imagination to Mokuba.   
  
What kind of horrible things were the daevas then, in that case? If the gods were willing to destroy the planet and all its peoples rather than let them fall to these things, how horrible must they be? If the gods had set up fail safes to have humans killed themselves rather than by the daevas, what kind of terrifying things must the daeva be? It was probably worse than he could even begin to imagine.  
  
"A fail safe then?" It might have come out sounding like a question, but it seemed they both knew it wasn't one, wasn't anything near one. In short, it was checking a fact, confirming it for future reference.  
  
"Definitely. I don't like leaving things like this to chance." Bakura paused again, leaning back a bit to better examine him. "You look exhausted, Seto. Of course, it's the middle of the night for you."  
  
He... hadn't even thought of that. They had left at dusk, and a lot had happened since they walked out of the hospital (and that was something that was never going to stop being amazing to him). "It probably is pretty late," he finally agreed.  
  
"Pretty close to midnight, I think, if you count time zones and such. Come on." The white-haired man pulled him to his feet easily, the show of strength very casual, like he could completely move Kaiba without even thinking about it. He stopped at the wall behind them and pressed lightly. It opened easily and silently to reveal a bedroom. He would think more about the size and state of it later, because right now all he was thinking about was how comfortable that bed looked. How the hell had Bakura managed as long as he had in the hospital knowing he had a bed like this waiting for him at home? "You can stay in here," Bakura continued, forcing him to refocus his thoughts.   
  
"I can... You're not..." If he was stammering, he was going to blame it on his exhaustion and the trying events of the evening.   
  
"Nah," Bakura returned. "I need to at least make sure Atemu hasn't broken my realm while I was gone. I wouldn't put anything past the little bastard. Aside from that, I need to sit Malik down and... have a talk with him."  
  
That was right. Bakura had promised to deal with Malik about the death threats. Surprisingly enough, he had almost forgotten about them. If he was following through on that part of his promise, however, did that also mean he was going to follow through on the other parts? Because if Mazaki was going to be smote, he wanted to be there to see it.  
  
"All right," he agreed. In truth, he was too tired to argue. There was too much that had happened in a single night for him to properly process or deal with everything that had presented itself so far. Maybe once he had gotten some sleep, maybe then he could begin to actually do something to help out here.   
  
For right now, though, he just wanted to climb into that huge bed, wrap himself up in the sheets on it that looked softer than anything he had ever seen before, and sleep a year. Well, maybe not a year. It was probably best to keep things like that himself. He did remember some stories about people visiting the fairies or the gods or something, and then they end up not coming back for a hundred years.   
  
"If you wake up before I get back, there are some books over there you are more than welcome to. Some of them might even cover some of the people you might meet out there tomorrow."   
  
He turned in the direction Bakura had nodded to see an entire wall covered in books. A few of them appeared to be fairly new, perhaps printed in the last century, but the majority looked ancient. The majority looked like things that should belong in a museum or to people like his uncle, not casually laying on shelves waiting for people like him to read them.  
  
"My home is yours, in short," Bakura finished.  
  
If he weren't about to drop from lack of sleep, he could seriously get behind properly appreciating an offer like that. In the morning, perhaps, he would, but for now, sleep was much, much more important. "Thank you," he offered quietly.   
  
So apparently Bakura wasn't kidding about waiting until Kaiba was ready to do anything more than he had so far. All he did now was kiss him lightly on the cheek before turning to head back out again with a quiet "Good night".   
  
"Wow."   
  
He had been wondering when Mokuba was going to pipe up again. He had been being unusually quiet, especially for him, and if so much hadn't been going on, it might have been worrisome. But perhaps his little brother was just as overwhelmed by all this as he himself was. God knew that was easy enough to happen, with things like they were right now. Anyone could easily get overwhelmed.  
  
"Yeah," he answered in return. There weren't a lot of words he could say about what was going on. It was just...  
  
"This is nine hundred breeds of crazy right now. You know that, right?" Of course, Mokuba would quickly recover his ability to speak and immediately launch himself into giving Kaiba a full rundown of his thoughts. "I mean, not like psych ward crazy, but truly out there crazy. Outer Limits crazy. Small room in the FBI basement crazy. Gods? Really? I stand by my earlier statement: wow."  
  
"So... are we still falling in the paranormal romance realms?"  
  
Mokuba paused, evidentially giving that one some thought before he finally nodded. "Yeah, I guess so, if only because I don't think there's another genre that would fit better. I mean, gods, demons–"  
  
"Daevas," he corrected absently.  
  
"–daevas, whatever. And a war going on on top of all that? Niisama, it's like you've fallen into a fantasy novel with romance leanings, not a romance novel with fantasy leanings. Only you could manage something like this, you know. My older brother," he mused aloud.   
  
"So hit me with whatever you know about all this. I don't want to go back out there unprepared."  
  
"Niisama, I actually don't know that much more than you on mythology and gods and dem– daevas. Gouzaburou didn't have that much material that covered those subjects, and it's not like either of us have had access to anything since then."  
  
"Then just... tell me what you do know. Please?" He hated to sound like he was begging, but it was information he did need.  
  
"Okay. I know a little about Hades. I know he was Zeus' brother, and he had some kind of cap or helmet or something of invisibility. I know he kidnapped Persephone, the Goddess of Spring. I know he rules Hades, the Land of the Dead, and that it has several sections for people who lived good lives, people who lived bad lives, and people who were going to be reborn. I don't know much more than that. Pluto is the Roman version of Hades. Pretty much everything is the same in those legends, just with different names. That other name, Gwynn ap Nudd," of course Mokuba would remember the name he was having trouble with, "I don't know anything about it, but I can assume it's similar to Hades and Pluto."  
  
He nodded behind the boy at the bookshelves. "Do you think you can find anything in there?" All those books – and Bakura had mentioned that there might be something on the subject in there somewhere. Mokuba did sometimes enjoy a challenge. Finding out the information they needed would definitely be just that.  
  
"Yeah, I think so. But you're not the only one who's been up for just about forever, niisama. I need some sleep too. I'll look in the morning, once I've been unconscious a while, okay?"  
  
"Okay," he agreed easily. It wasn't a hard call to make, after all. It wasn't like he needed the information right now, like it was do or die or anything. They had a little bit of time.   
  
He didn't have too much to change into to sleep in, since he had left a good deal of what he had at the hospital; it either had reminded too much of the hospital or he had long out grown them. When he had been there, he had usually slept in a pair of scrubs one of the nurses had long ago give him; they were thin, nearly threadbare, but still the most comfortable things he owned. They would have to do for here for now. Maybe Bakura had meant the part about procuring him some more clothes. At least, he hoped Bakura had meant it. A grand total of three outfits, one of which was pajamas, just wasn't the way he wanted to present himself around here.  
  
But they would do for tonight, he decided, quickly changing into the scrubs and crawling into the bed. It was every bit as comfortable as it had looked earlier, but unfortunately, he was still too tired to properly appreciate it. In fact, he had the feeling that he was going to be completely unconscious sooner rather than later.  
  
Mokuba shucked off his tennis shoes and clambered up next to him. "Good night, niisama."  
  
It was the first night of the rest of their lives, after all, so... "Good night, Mokuba."


	8. Chapter 8

He woke up slowly. It was impossible to tell if it was morning yet or not; he had yet to see a single beam of sunshine around here, but he did possess a fairly good internal alarm clock. It was screaming at him that it was well after dawn but not so late as midmorning. That, in turn, meant it was probably time to get up and get moving. He wasn't planning on venturing out of these rooms just yet, but he at least wanted to start going through some of those books and start finding out something about the situation here.   
  
What he wasn't counting on was the overwhelming weight holding his legs down. He managed to maneuver the top portion of his body to sit up, just enough that he could stare at the end of the bed.   
  
It wasn't unheard of for Mokuba to start on one side of the bed and end up completely covering the rest of it by morning. What he was not used to, however, was a gigantic dog joining him in the habit. It wasn't like Gwyllgi was even a third as heavy as his size seemed to indicate he should have been, but he definitely wasn't a feather either. If anything, he was a tad heavier than Mokuba. It was the combination of the two, though, that fairly had him pinned in place.   
  
Carefully, he worked his legs free and climbed off the bed, much to the protest of the oversized mutt and his little brother. At least it seemed those two were bonding well, at least over taking large portions of the bed away from him. He hadn't been kidding, after all, when he had told Bakura that Mokuba would be interested in his dogs. The way the white-haired man had talked he had several more, but at least for now, Mokuba was happy with this one.   
  
The books lining the wall beckoned, promises of knowledge hiding in their depths, but first he had to find out if Bakura had taken human needs into account when he designed this room. He didn't think gods needed to use the rest room, even first thing in the morning; he certainly hadn't seen Bakura heading in that direction at any point during the time they had been together at the hospital.   
  
When Bakura had opened the wall to reveal this room, he had proven that there didn't seem to be any such thing as actual doors here, which made him wonder what he had seen Amane coming in and out of last night, so he gave shoving on various parts of the wall a try, until something shifted beneath his hand. Yes, Bakura _had_ indeed taken human needs into account with this place, even if it was well hidden.  
  
Morning business quickly taken care of, he slipped back into the bedroom and selected a book from the shelves at random. It wasn't like most or even many of them had titles on the spines, only the newer looking ones. It was going to be trial and error trying to find something that would tell him what he needed to know.  
  
He opened the book he had selected to roughly the middle section – and frowned. It would also apparently going to be trial and error to find one in a language he could read. He wasn't sure what language this might be, but he couldn't say he had ever seen a Latin letter language where there were either no vowels... or the letter 'w' was counted as one. He set that one aside to try another. This one at least looked vaguely like English, but the spellings were all wrong, which probably pushed it back at least several centuries before his time.  
  
By the time he had finished going through a single section of the shelves, he had eliminated all but four books. The ones that remained were newer, and they at least boasted all being in the same language. And for now, he was going to count the lack of 'w's as vowels as an accomplishment. Now it was only a matter of seeing what he could find before either Bakura showed up or the other inhabitants of the room woke up.  
  
The stories on Hades were pretty straightforward. Most of what was in these books mostly concerned the Persephone story and pomegranates. The Pluto and Proserpina story was almost identical in every fact. Like Mokuba had said, it was just that the names had been changed. There was nothing on that other name, but it could have just been that he wasn't correct on the spelling. He didn't know Malik's god name – and that was frightening just thinking it – but he had some hints to work with for Amane: the names of her two blood brothers and the fact that their release would end the world. It was as good a starting place as any.  
  
As far as he was concerned, everyone was doing a particularly nasty sneeze mixed with what might have been their intestines exploding every time they said that second name; he was fairly certain he could manage the first one, though. 'Fenrir,' he thought it was. That one should be something he could manage to spell correctly. With the second one, he was only reasonably certain that it started with the letter 'j', and anything after that was officially beyond him.  
  
It wasn't in the first book, where he had found most of the information on Hades and Pluto. 'Fenrir' didn't really sound Greek or Latin anyway. So that ruled out Edith Hamilton's Mythology, he decided, setting the second book aside as well. The third book seemed to cover the gamut of pantheons, so maybe he would find something in this one. It probably would not contain a lot of detail, but a little something was better than nothing.   
He skimmed through the pages, glancing each one over quickly looking for names he had heard to date with little success. Fenrir was in this one, though, accompanied by a set of illustrations that made him want to rethink any idea he may have had about the possibility of Amane being the nice and sweet one. He quickly flipped to the back of the book to check the information on the two images: "The Children of Loki (1920) by Willy Pogány" and "Loki's Brood (1905) by Emil Doepler". Then that would definitely mean these were Amane's brothers then: a gigantic wolf and what looked like a snake. And Bakura had mentioned Loki by name, that he was one of the gods that would be released when the rest of them died.   
  
With a little more trepidation now, he turned back to the article he had found and started reading what this author had had to say about Fenrir. That seemed to be the wolf, described as large enough that, with his mouth open, the top jaw touched the sky and the bottom jaw the earth. Amazing, considering how tiny Amane had been – or least had seemed to be. Maybe they could alter how they looked... but one paranoid theory at the time.   
  
The article stated that Fenrir had been bound in some sort of special cords with a sword through his jaw; once he was set free, he was supposed to kill Odin in Ragnarök, which he was not one hundred percent certain on but that he was fairly certain was the end of the world Bakura had mentioned. Fenrir was supposed to have two siblings: Jörmungandr and Hel, or Hela, depending on the source. Jörmungandr had apparently been cast down into the world ocean, swam around until he circled the earth, and bit his own tail; when he let go, it was – again – Ragnarök. And Hel had apparently been sentenced to rule an Underworld, which took her name, and later became the Christian Hell. He wasn't having a lot of luck on the specifics of why the three siblings were punished, just some vague references about where they were being raised and worry concerning their father being Loki, but still, it was fascinating stuff.  
  
Honestly, he wanted to know if there was anything to be found on Gwyllgi, but that was another one he was none too sure on the spelling of. It wasn't like there was a way for him to speak what he wanted and the book look it up for him. Stuff like that was reserved solely for science fiction, more was the shame.   
  
Bakura had said something about what kind of dog Gwyllgi was, though, so maybe that was a starting point. He would take his starting points where he could get them at this point. What was it Bakura had said? A Gabriel Hound?  
  
On a hunch, he decided to stick with the book he was currently using, the one where he had found the information on Amane's older brothers, and went straight to the index and for the term 'Gabriel Hounds'... which in turn led to the terms 'Gabble Retchets' and 'Cŵn Annwn'. There was that damn 'w' as a vowel again. He seriously needed to remember to ask Bakura about that later. He flipped the entry on 'Gabble Retchets': supernatural spectral hounds that haunted Great Britain during the Wild Hunt. That... didn't sound good. Likewise for the other one, the one he wasn't even going to try to pronounce, it came down to ghost dogs and the Wild Hunt, as well as death portents and the Otherworld, Annwn in the latter's case. He read one line, paused, reread it, and had to snort quietly in amusement: the Cŵn Annwn sounded close when they were far away but distant when they were close. Gwyllgi had already displayed that talent outside the hospital.   
  
The second article in turn linked another one on black dogs and another on Black Shuck. Right now at least, neither of those seemed too terribly important, so he decided to skip them. They might have been important later, even if they weren't right now, so he set the four books aside, somewhere where he could find them quickly and easily, on a small marble table near the bed.   
  
When Bakura had apparently been considering his human needs, he had at least also included a rather elegant claw footed tub, so he grabbed the small duffle with his meager belongings and slipped back into the bathroom to bathe off quickly before the day began here. It didn't seem too likely that it would begin early. Bakura had been pleasant at the hospital, but by no means had he been a morning person. It would make sense, in that case, that his entire realm – and that was something he wasn't going to think too hard on, lest he break something in his brain – would be the same.   
  
To himself, he wondered if it would be possible to get Bakura to replace the tub with a shower or at least a combination shower-tub, he thought as he waited for the water to fill; it was unusually quick, probably due to its location, but there was still a moment or two's need to wait. Not that he didn't appreciate that Bakura had at least taken this into account in bringing him here, but he was a bit used to 21st century accommodations, such that the ones that he had known were. As it was, what he had seen of Bakura's realm was far, far beyond in luxury the highest standard he had ever had to measure against: his uncle's home.  
  
Gouzaburou had maintained a very hands-off policy to everything in his collection. If a single finger touched it without gloves, there would be hell to pay. If someone younger than thirty even looked like they might have been thinking about touching something, there would be entire worlds of hell to pay. He remembered less than stellar evenings there with him and Mokuba wandering around with their hands in their pockets, too afraid to take them out and risk possibly touching something. Mokuba, as he recalled, had still managed to brush something with his elbow. The vase – or whatever it was, his memory was not too sharp on the subject – had teetered but not fallen. That hadn't made any difference to Gouzaburou, though. He couldn't remember too many of the specifics, but Mokuba had been a tiny thing at the time, much smaller than even now, and so he had lied through his teeth and said it had been his fault. Everything after that for the rest of that night was still something of a blur. Come to think of it, it wasn't long after that incident when he and Mokuba had been taken to the orphanage.  
  
Bakura's collection... It didn't seem right to even call it that, a 'collection'. Everything in this place might have been old enough to put the oldest piece in Gouzaburou's to shame, but there was a sense of casualness to it, as if this was how things were every day, as if Bakura lived like this. He probably did. If gods were as old as Bakura had been implying, then it was entirely possible that Bakura had acquired some of these pieces in person.   
  
When he had been in the living area and bedroom, he had spotted Ancient Greek vases that Gouzaburou would have died to have possessed. He had seen a painting on the wall that looked like early Italian Renaissance. The couch was Rococo period, while the chair Bakura had pulled Kaiba into to share with him was an oversized version of what could be picked up at any modern furniture store.   
  
There was no real rhyme or reason to the collection, instead giving the impression that Bakura was just picking up things that caught his eye, like a magpie or something. Somehow that did seem to be an apt description for the white-haired man. If he saw something he liked, he took it and that was that. After all, hadn't Bakura as much as admitted that he had picked up and taken three people now, including him? That definitely seemed to fit.  
  
He made the bath as quickly as he could, dried off, and slipped into the other outfit he had brought with him. This officially ended the clothes he had brought with him: the scrub pajamas, the clothes he wore yesterday, and these. Still, it would be best to just deal with everything one thing at the time and not try to rush into dealing with everything at once. That was just the kind of crazy he didn't go for.   
  
He pushed open the bathroom door -- and was promptly assaulted by Mokuba, as the boy caught his legs in a crushing hug. "Good morning, niisama!" he called out in a singsong once he let go again, a huge grin plastered all over his face. At his side, Gwyllgi panted.   
  
If he had half of the sense of imagination that his little brother did, he might have actually been willing to say that the dog looked like it was grinning, perhaps even intelligently. And somehow that wouldn't surprise him in the least: if Bakura's dog was freakishly intelligent too, given that all the information seemed to point towards it – him – being supernatural. He could live with that; he could deal with the idea of supernatural animals; but it was the idea of spectral – of _ghost_ – dogs that went a bit beyond the pale for him.   
  
Gwyllgi seemed rather solid to him, though, so maybe that part was actually embellished or something. Maybe he should have taken the time to read up on the other versions of the supernatural dogs, but it seemed that he had timed it perfectly as it was; he had had time to get up, research a bit, and get ready before Mokuba was up and moving. It was really starting to seem like he might be the only person here who woke up early, or perhaps others were stirring outside these chambers and he just had not heard anything from them yet.   
  
After all, it wasn't as if he had met all that many gods yet: just Bakura, Malik, and Amane. If the three of them were somehow representative of the rest of the gods here, then he could expect...   
  
Well, truthfully, he had no idea what he could expect.   
  
Malik was a bit of an asshole, Bakura freely admitted he was crazy, and Amane had brothers who could end the world. All they really had in common was that presence they all wore wrapped tightly around them like a cloak or a cape. No, he took that back: there was also affection there, seemingly reluctantly between Bakura and Malik, among the three of them, like they had carved out their own small family in the midst of this war that was apparently going on. Bakura had said that few of the gods liked the death gods and so they had bonded together, him and Amane, and if Amane was... with Malik – which he really did not want to think about, thank you very much – then that did make them into some sort of a family unit, one that maybe he and Mokuba might one day be accepted into.  
  
"Good morning, Mokuba," he returned, allowing himself a small smile. On an afterthought, he then turned his attention to the other creature in the room. "Good morning, Gwyllgi." The dog huffed something that might have almost been an answer, and that wasn't as frightening as it might have been last night. Now, he could almost deal with it. The sleep and the reading had helped with that. He felt better able to accept and, yes, deal with this strange change in his life.  
  
"I like this place, niisama," Mokuba declared cheerfully, bouncing back up onto the bed. "I like the way it feels. We're going to stay here, right?"  
  
He opened his mouth to answer, but another voice spoke up before he could. "I certainly hope you're planning on that."   
  
Bakura looked... Well, to him, the man looked gorgeous, and that was a new revelation too; apparently he did have a sex drive after all, and it liked very, very pale men with white hair. It was actually a little surprising, just a little, to him to see Bakura still dressed the same way he had been when they left; he wore a different pair of jeans and a different t-shirt, but it was still very casual, not all what one would expect a god to wear. He also looked exhausted, though, more so than Kaiba had ever seen him look. Not that he had known Bakura all that long, but still... Clearly being back here wasn't exactly relaxing for him, but then there was a war going on. There probably wasn't really time for relaxing.  
  
"I'm planning on it," he answered quietly. "You're not getting rid of me that easily."  
  
"Good." A chair appeared near the bookshelves only a few seconds before Bakura collapsed down into it. His entire demeanor screamed exhaustion, and that just wasn't right at all.  
  
For a split second, he was frozen in place just past the bathroom door, just barely in the bedroom area, Mokuba and Gwyllgi standing next to him. A moment later, he found himself having crossed the room to place a careful hand on Bakura's cheek, thumbing over skin that seemed too soft to be real and pushing snow white hair out of the other man's face. Bakura sighed, turning his face into the caress and reaching up to lay a possessive arm around Kaiba's waist.   
  
"What's wrong?" he asked just as quietly has he had spoken before. Somehow it seemed important to be soft-spoken right now, as if someone might find them if he was too loud or something. More than likely, however, it had something to do with the pinched look on Bakura's face; it was one he recognized, as it was something he had often seen in mirrors, as that of someone in the midst of a rather outstanding headache. Apparently, it seemed that gods could get those too.   
  
"I'm going to find a way to kill Atemu and feed him to the hounds." Even the threat lacked the vehemence of the similar ones he had made last night.   
  
"What did he do now?" Because he was coming to understand how poorly Bakura and this Atemu guy got along.  
  
"Breathe." Bakura shook his head as if to clear it and gave Kaiba's waist a light tug, pulling him in closer. "Don't worry about it, Seto. Atemu's just a pain in my ass. He has been since the gods formed this alliance, and he will continue to be until the day we all die horribly. That's the just the way of things, I guess."  
  
"I guess I'll see," he finally offered. Sooner or later, he was going to have venture out of these rooms and meet all these other people. Sooner or later, he was going to have to start earning his keep. At that point, he supposed he would get to see if Atemu was as bad as Amane and Bakura made him out to be. He was having a hard time seeing how that could be, but then he hadn't laid eyes on the man yet. Maybe they were exaggerating, maybe they weren't. He would find out soon enough, he supposed.  
  
"Yeah, well, maybe we can put that off a bit." Bakura slowly pushed himself to his feet and stepped over to a blank spot of wall near the bathroom door. He was still a long moment then pushed it open. Well, that definitely solved the problem of him not having enough to wear from here on out, if Bakura could create walk-in closets out of nowhere. "What do you think?"   
  
He headed in, taking the time took glance over each item of clothes in turn. He wasn't too sure on the trench coats – a dark blue cotton one and a sleeveless white leather one further back –but the rest of the clothes seemed to be perfectly serviceable. "They're good."  
  
"If they aren't to your tastes, I can always change them out for something that is."  
  
But he was already shaking his head. "They really are good. Thank you." On the spur of the moment, he stalked back over to the white-haired man to place a gentle kiss of thanks to his lips. When he leaned back, he whispered again, "Thank you, Bakura."  
  
Behind the white-haired man, he heard the sounds of someone nervously clearing their throat. "Excuse me?" That was Mokuba, and yeah, he did sound a little nervous. Kaiba couldn't help wondering why, though. It wasn't like Bakura had given them any reason to be worried about him or what he might do to them, not like some of the people they had met over the years.   
  
Bakura turned, pale eyes locking unerringly on the boy, barely glancing over the huge dog sitting contentedly beside him. "Yes?"  
  
"I hate to ask, but if he leaves Annwn, will the clothes–?" A faint red tint stained his face. "I mean, the clothes are kind of like fairy-made, right? They don't only exist only here, do they?"  
  
Well, okay, yeah, that was important. He would hate to walk out into the real world – the human world or whatever it was called – and suddenly find himself stark naked. "Bakura?" he prompted.   
  
Bakura laughed, and he was a little pleased to hear that it was that carefree one again. He was going to have to try his best to make sure he could hear it at every possible opportunity. "Yeah, they're real enough, and they won't be disappearing in public any time soon. I don't think anyone here would want that, would we?"  
  
Mokuba was shaking his head hard. "Yeah, no, no way. I mean, you might want to see my brother naked," great, now he could feel his own face heating up hard and fast – and that was in turn another set of thoughts that he shouldn't be thinking right now, "but I definitely don't. I could live the rest of my life happily without ever seeing him naked."  
  
"I'll bear that in mind," Bakura replied with another quiet chuckle. "What about you, Mokuba? How do you like it here? Anything you want or need?"  
  
His little brother shook his head quickly, grinning mischievously. "Nope, not yet anyway." Oh, he knew the tone of voice Mokuba was speaking in, and he had learned to fear it many years ago. Generally, it meant he was about to get teased for something soon. He had, in turn, learned not to rise to the bait. Bakura hadn't, though, and so raised an eyebrow in a silent question. "I mean, these are your rooms, aren't they? That means I'm going to need some of my own sooner or later." He took a step back, glancing back and forth between the two of them, that damned grin only building. "You two are going to be wanting some alone time soon, yeah?"  
  
"Mokuba," he groaned. Yep, that feeling of worry had been correct. When they were both younger, Mokuba had lived to embarrass him wherever it was possible. That, at least, had not changed.  
  
And Bakura, apparently, found it funny. Well, he would, wouldn't he?   
  
Maybe it wasn't too bad. It wasn't like he was being embarrassed in front of anybody else.   
  
If there was one thing he had picked up from Bakura talking with Amane, it was that family – even adopted family – teased one another, and it wasn't like Bakura had been spared that then. So then the gods weren't that different in terms of family relations to how humans functioned. That was good. He was forming and extending his own little family as it was.  
  
It took him until much later that he realized what had been so strange about that morning. It was, after all, the first time in years he could remember anyone speaking to Mokuba -- or even acknowledging his presence. That in and of itself was odd, but then so much else now was odd too that maybe he just needed to push it aside. He was getting better at stuff like that now, after all.  
  
In the meantime, he would just be glad and count his blessings that he was with someone who would at least acknowledge his little brother's very existence, to say nothing of taking the time to joke and laugh with him. That, at least, was good.


	9. Chapter 9

It was closer to lunch before they ventured out of Bakura's rooms. Mokuba was still sticking pretty close to him, and Gwyllgi was no more than a step or two away from the boy at all times. It pleased him, because his little brother could use a friend other than him. It had only been the two of them for entirely too long. Maybe sooner or later, they might even meet another person for Mokuba to befriend. He was going to hope that, if Bakura and Gwyllgi could see him, then others here could too.  
  
But first, they would both need some time to get to this place. Annwn was what Mokuba had called it. It sounded both foreign and exotic in weird ways he couldn't quite place. He could see how it would be known as the Otherworld. Everything about it was, in point of fact, otherworldly. There weren't that many people to be seen, but the ones who were visible tended to be youthful, appearing around the same age as he was. He hadn't seen anyone who was much older than he was, though that did make sense. Who would want to spend the afterlife in anything other than the prime of their life? No one really seemed to be dead, not as he would have previously thought of it anyway. No one was dragging about, moaning, or groaning. Instead, it was more like a happier continuation of life. That was reassuring.   
  
What was a tiny bit confusing to him, though, was that he hadn't seen anyone besides them dressed in anything resembling modern clothing. His confusion must have shown on his face because, without prompting, Bakura explained, "Once people stop believing in an afterlife, they don't go there any longer. There haven't been real believers in Annwn in ages."  
  
He nodded. "I guess that makes sense," he offered quietly.   
  
So when a man appeared around a corner just ahead of them, dressed in blue jeans, a blue and white t-shirt, and a denim jacket too warm for the weather, he didn't even bother assuming he was one of the dead. As unconventional as it might have seemed, this man had to be another of the gods. It made sense, he supposed: while the blond hair might have been a believable shade for a human, those amber-gold eyes were a bit above and beyond what he would have expected to see passing someone on the street.   
  
"Bakura!" he called out, waving excitedly. After dealing with the other gods he had met, he was glad he hadn't been expecting this guy to be the stoic and bland image of the gods he might have had before this little adventure began. Instead he was vibrant, almost painfully so, in a way that defied explanation except to say that he had a forceful personality even from at a distance and he was cheerful without being the annoying version thereof that Mazaki had always been. Maybe it was more than this guy seemed outgoing in a way that he himself did not think he would ever be. "When did you get back?"  
  
"Late last night, shortly before you got back yourself." Bakura's tone seemed a bit stilted in a way it hadn't been with Amane or Malik. His psychology wasn't the best, but he had been on the receiving end of enough of it through the years that he could hazard a guess: this guy might have been an acquaintance of Bakura's, but they didn't seem to be friends the way he was with his sister – or even reluctant friends as he was with Malik. So, if he was at least somewhat friendly with the guy, then this couldn't be Atemu. "Amane said you had some success."  
  
The blond nodded, an easy smirk on his face. "Yeah, some. I found Yuugi." Bakura nodded, and to Kaiba at least, it looked merely polite, not like actual interest. "It's kind of freaky, though."  
  
Now that was mildly disturbing, the thought that anything could be 'freaky' to a god. What qualified as 'freaky' to one of them anyway?  
  
"What's freaky?" Bakura prompted. Now on this, he definitely looked interested. Perhaps he was wondering the same thing Kaiba was.  
  
"The guy, Yuugi I mean, he looks _just_ like Atemu. Okay, maybe not _just_ like him: he's a little shorter and his eyes are a different color. But otherwise, he looks just like Atemu." The man snickered, but instead of sounding amused, it sounded rather worried instead. "I mean, he even wears a shit ton of leather and everything."  
  
Bakura looked like someone had punched the breath out of him. "R-really?" he finally managed to get out, though it sounded entirely too breathless for Kaiba's tastes.   
  
The blond nodded. "Yeah, seriously." He shook his head, apparently trying to clear it a bit. "I haven't heard anything about the guy Atemu found, except that he apparently shot Atemu down _hard_."  
  
That seemed to help Bakura recover quickly. "Oh? Now this I need to hear all about."  
  
"I don' t have all the details, but apparently, Atemu made a pass at him and the guy freaked the fuck out. I was just heading over to Mai's and Mana's to try to get all the dirty details."  
  
"I like the sound of this guy already. Let me know what you find out, okay?"   
  
The blond nodded then finally glanced past Bakura at him, Mokuba, and Gwyllgi. "I see you didn't come back home empty handed either."  
  
Bakura turned, a hand casually slipping into one of his own. Belatedly, he realized he was starting to tense up and made himself relax again. "Kaiba Seto, this is Jounouchi. He's our resident healer and medic around these parts, and you're never going to find a better one." The guy, Jounouchi, laughed shortly, not even pretending to look embarrassed. Clearly, he was very comfortable in his knowledge that he was the best that was going to be found. "Jounouchi, this is Kaiba Seto and his brother, Mokuba."  
  
"Pleased to meet you," he offered.   
  
For a long moment, he was uncertain whether or not he should extend his hand in greeting or not, but Jounouchi solved that little problem by offering his own first. "Likewise... Kaiba, right?" He nodded. Only one person here was going to call him 'Seto', and it wasn't this person he had just met. "I take it you must be the first listener." Again, he nodded. "Good. I'm glad to hear you're willing to help us out."  
  
"Yeah, some of us need all the help we can get," Bakura quipped.   
  
Clearly Jounouchi knew it was not meant at him and maybe even know whom it was meant for, from the way he snorted hard. He glanced past Kaiba to where Mokuba stood, started, and glanced back again. Alarmed, Kaiba also turned to look at his little brother.   
  
Okay, maybe it was a bit odd to see Mokuba trying to tuck himself back behind Gwyllgi. He was short enough still to get away with it, if it weren't for the way the dog kept dancing back behind him, as if they were playing some exceptionally fun game. Why would Mokuba be trying to hide himself anyway, though? That part made no sense to him. His little brother was one of the most outgoing, gregarious people he knew, after all.   
  
"Hello there. I can't say I've seen one of you guys in years," the blond commented, and frankly, it made less than no sense to him. Combined with the nervous-worried-embarrassed expression on Mokuba's face, he could admit that he was completely and utterly lost.   
  
Mokuba looked like he was about a split second from either burying his face in Gwyllgi's admittedly short fur or turning around to make a mad dash back to the suite of rooms they had recently left. Honestly, he couldn't remember the last time he had seen an expression like that on Mokuba's face, but it was probably when they were still living with their uncle Gouzaburou. Kaiba started to speak up for his little brother; it was his job to do so, after all, as an older brother; before Mokuba recovered his composure and pulled himself up to his full height. "I came here with my big brother."  
  
Both of Jounouchi's eyebrows shot up to his hairline immediately. "Really? Cool, so you're sticking with him?"  
  
Mokuba nodded. "Definitely."  
  
"Cool." If he looked closely, he could see Mokuba release a breath he must have been holding all this conversation. Clearly, he had been thinking Jounouchi was going to say something, but so far, the blond was keeping it to himself. "I guess that means I'll be seeing you around then." He reaffixed his attention back to Bakura, who looked mildly curious at best. "I need to get over to the girls' place and see what I can find out about this blowout. If we're lucky, Mana took pictures. Later, Bakura." He took a few steps past them but then paused and turned back. "Oh, and Bakura? Atemu has been on the prowl since he got his feelings hurt. Just thought you should know."  
  
Bakura snorted inelegantly. "I'm not avoiding him in my own realm, but thanks for the heads up. Let me know what you find out."  
  
"Sure thing," Jounouchi answered then vanished into thin air, just as Malik had done last night.   
  
He didn't like this. He didn't like some random god knowing something that made his little brother so nervous and willing to try to hide or run. He wanted to know what it was, so that he could fix it immediately. It was what big brothers did, as far as he was concerned.  
  
"Seto, babe, you look mad enough there to start steaming," Bakura interrupted his thoughts, effectively bringing him back to what was going on around him. The white-haired man had stepped closer to him, never releasing his hand, while his other had come up to cup his cheek. He looked as worried as Mokuba had only a few moments ago, without the side of... fear. That was what he had seen in Mokuba's face, and that had to be why he had disliked the whole situation as much as he had.   
  
Impatiently, he shook off both of Bakura's hand and moved back over to Mokuba, kneeling down in front of him and checking him over as he hadn't done in years. After all, for years, no one had been willing to see Mokuba but himself; they had all ignored him; so he hadn't had to worry nearly as much about someone hurting him. While it was good that people were willing to talk to him, to acknowledge him now, that apparently could mean that they could hurt him.   
"I'm okay, niisama," Mokuba whispered. "I promise, I'm okay."   
  
He shook his head, speaking just as quietly. "Something that guy said upset you. What is it?"  
  
In turn, Mokuba now shook his head side to side violently. "No! I mean, it's nothing." He turned an arch expression on his little brother, one that he hoped obviously said he didn't believe a word of that protest. It seemed that he had been successful when Mokuba sighed and corrected himself, "Okay, how about it's nothing I want to talk about? Can we just leave it dropped, niisama? Because it's not like it's really bad, but it's going to upset you, and I don't want to do that."  
  
He wanted so desperately to shake his head in disagreement. He didn't want to drop the subject; he wanted to know what had upset Mokuba. Instead, he bit down on his lower lip and slowly stated, "I don't want to, but I will... if you want me to."  
  
"Mokuba," Bakura's voice cut through the painfully tight silence his brother's lack of an answer had left, "whatever it is, I'm sure you can tell him. Seto's your brother, and there's nothing that's going to change that."  
  
His brother looked a split second away from tears. "No. I don't want to."  
  
Kaiba wrapped his arms around the boy and pulled him close to his body, as he hadn't since they were both a lot younger. "You know you can tell me anything, Mokuba. I won't hold it against you or anything."  
  
"You might for this." The words were sniffled out and nearly broke his heart. In response, he only held on more tightly.  
  
"No, I won't. You can tell me if you want to Mokuba. You can tell me anything."  
  
Mokuba cast a terrified glance first at him then to Bakura then back to him. If he didn't know better, he would think he was looking to Bakura for help in the explanation he was obviously struggling with. That didn't make any sense, though. Why would Bakura know the answer to Mokuba's dilemma, after all?  
  
"You know, up until a few years ago," Bakura began, apropos to nothing, from where he had been leaning against a wall since Kaiba had left his side, "there were a lot more living people in Annwn. This is the realm of the Fair Folk, as well as the realm of the dead. About twenty years ago, though, the daevas first arrived in Wales, and everyone panicked. The Fair Folk had never been threatened on their home turf before, and Wales itself was too close to the borders to Annwn. They started running and hiding in the human world, including finding places to hide their children." He took a deep breath, fixing his eyes on Mokuba briefly but significantly, before he turned his gaze back to Kaiba. "Sometimes, they switched them out with human children, so that they had ready-made families waiting to care for them."  
  
Mokuba sniffled, a sound he hadn’t heard his brother make in years, pulling in closer than he had been before. In a quiet voice, he whispered, "That's where I come in."  
  
Could he be blamed that the first two thoughts that went through his head were 'for how long' and 'no wonder no one would – _could_ – see him in the hospital', he had to wonder. Because of all the inane things that could have gone through his head, those were the immediate ones. Of the two, though, he decided to go with the former. It was probably a bit more relevant to the conversation.   
  
"Okay," he answered, trying for the calmest voice in his arsenal and succeeding fairly well, he thought, "for how long then? Since when?" Was the Mokuba that was here now the Mokuba he had always known, or was there an exchange made at some point? He was hoping for the former and not the latter, because if there had been a switch made any time recently, then he had utterly missed it, which didn't say good things about his observation skills... nor his qualities as an older brother.  
  
"Since... since always?" Mokuba ventured hesitantly.   
  
Again Bakura stepped in with an explanation. "The Fair Folk usually switch their children out with human children in infancy. With all of this going on, as far as I was ever told, they got desperate enough to start switching them before birth or even causing a woman to be pregnant by hiding the child in her womb. Which of these Mokuba is, I can't say. It hasn't been recently, though," he assured, combating Kaiba's biggest fear in this conversation. "The Mokuba you know now is the Mokuba you have always known."  
  
"Is that– Are we–" Mokuba floundered, clearly trying to ask a question that he wasn't too certain he actually wanted an answer to. "Are we okay... niisama?"  
  
And just like that, the roiling in his gut went away. "You're still my little brother, Mokuba. That doesn't change." He glanced down and tried to look critical. "No more big surprises, though, okay? I'm not sure I can handle that."  
  
Mokuba paused, looking as though he was considering whether or not he had any more surprises to pop on him, even as he wiped furiously as the few tears that had escaped. "Does the fact I can do little magics count as another big surprise?" he finally asked.  
  
That... shouldn't have been a surprise, given the previous revelation, but somehow it still was, at least a bit. "How small is 'little'?"   
  
Mokuba shrugged. "I made all the people in the hospital not see me. I didn't want them to make me leave. It's like you used to say, niisama: we're Kaibas, and Kaibas stick together."   
  
He vaguely remembered saying that, back at the orphanage, if he recalled correctly. If he was right on the timing and location, then it was when their uncle – when Gouzaburou had showed back up and offered to bring him – and just him – home. The rest of the events of that evening were still a bit of a blur, but he did remember waking up the next morning in the infirmary with Mokuba curled up on the bed with him and a still wet plaster cast on his arm. He had wondered for a while what had happened, but eventually he had dismissed, as he had so many blank spots in his childhood.  
  
"That's okay," he answered at length. "Just no more magics that make me look like I'm crazy, okay?"

* * *

  
It was all sort of amazing, he decided. Almost every reason he had ever been given for why people thought he might be crazy was slowly but surely being broken down and discarded. All it had taken was a trip with an impossible person to an even more impossible place.   
  
Annwn's very nature seemed to be fluid. One minute the gigantic room they had been in was empty, while the next several long tables and benches had appeared out of thin air. All in all, it looked like the illustrations in some books about the Middle Ages and the artists' ideas of a lord's hall during feast times. Something told him, though, that this was quite a bit bigger than anything that had been seen in the human world had ever been. To the side, there was even a –what had the books called it? – dais, though thankfully, it remained unoccupied. Of course, if Bakura was ruler of Annwn, then that should have been where he took a seat, instead of in the middle of one of the empty tables.  
  
He must have worn a confused expression on his face, because Bakura chuckled and explained, "There aren't that many people here anymore, at least not that eat... which definitely doesn't include the dead. It seems silly insist on custom when there aren't that many of us." He glanced around at the huge room, empty except for them. "Though I have to say, I haven't had the heart to change the spell so that it doesn't conjure so many empty places. There haven't been this many people here, not since the Fair Folk left."  
  
Slowly Kaiba took a seat next to him. He didn't even try to scold Mokuba when he clambered over the table to sit on the side opposite them. "Where did they go?" he asked quietly. "Did the daevas–?"  
  
But Bakura was already shaking his head. "No, the daevas didn't find them. At least, they didn't find them here. They panicked when the daevas got as far as Wales, like I said, they hid their children, and they fled. I don't know where they went when they left, but I haven't seen them since. Jounouchi and I are the last of the gods with any connection to the Fair Folk left." He shook his head. "I'm not even sure either of us can call on them if it comes down to needing them. In a pinch or anything."   
  
And that brought something else to mind. "Is there anyone besides the gods in this against the daevas? Like, I don't know," he floundered quickly through his brief knowledge of mythology until he hit on something that he had actually read in the article on Fenrir, "like the giants or something?"  
  
To his relief, Bakura nodded. At least what he had asked wasn't too far out there. "Yeah, Amane's mom has gotten the ice giants to agree to help us, if it comes down to it, to a final battle, I mean. I think we're all hoping that it _doesn't_ come down to that, though."  
  
The little he had seen about frost giants when he was reading up on Fenrir... Well, it gave him hope that their assistance would turn the tide if it came down to it. But like Bakura, he really hoped it never ended up coming down to it. If it did, then humans would probably well and truly be doomed by then. "Agreed. Hopefully, it never will come to that," he agreed.  
  
Bakura opened his mouth to speak... then paused to groaned heavily. "Great," he moaned under his breath. "Just what I _didn't_ need today."  
  
He glanced over his shoulder. Going from that Jounouchi's guy's description of this Yuugi person – his height or lack thereof, his penchant for leather – and what he had already observed about the gods – their unusual physical characteristics, especially their eyes, and that aura of age and power that clung to them – this guy had to be a god, and specifically, he had to be Atemu.   
  
He didn't look like much, was one of Kaiba's first thoughts upon measuring him up. He looked like he was of an even height to, if not slightly taller than, Mokuba. Yeah, he did wear a lot of leather, enough that he had to wonder if the man had beaten up a really short biker for his clothes. Those were the semi-normal things about him.   
  
Beyond that, everything about him was otherworldly: his hair spiked up into shades of gold, maroon, and violet; and Kaiba noticed as he got closer, his eyes were blood red, as in literally the same shade as newly fallen blood. He _felt_ different from the gods he had met so far, in some vague way that was neither age nor power, and Kaiba had to wonder if that was the difference that made him be classified as an – what was it again? – All Father, he thought Bakura had said.   
  
Across the table from them, Mokuba was starting to shrink down in his seat, like he was trying to disappear under the table or something. Of course, apparently his little brother wasn't human, which was still a bit beyond his ability to comprehend, so maybe he was picking up more from this Atemu person than Kaiba himself was. He wished, though, that he could place what it was about this shrimp that made him feel so very different from Bakura, Amane, Malik, and Jounouchi. As it was, however, he had no idea.  
  
Besides, the way the tension was steadily building in the room left little time for thinking about trivial things such as that. Atemu's red eyes had caught Bakura's, and each of their eyes had narrowed sharply. Somehow he had the feeling that Atemu hadn't even noticed him or Mokuba yet, and somehow he was just as happy as could be for that fact. He had not wish to want to be caught under that gaze.   
  
"Bakura," the shorter man growled, prowling up behind Mokuba before he finally stopped. It wasn't a greeting. In fact, it sounded more like a threat than anything else.   
  
His little brother's eyes went wide as dinner plates, and finally he gave into the urge apparently because he squirmed under the table, popping up to all but sit in Kaiba's lap. He wasn't disagreeing, even if neither of them had needed physical comfort this close for years. Right now, in the presence of this guy, this god, it felt like they needed it again.  
  
Honestly, if it had felt like Malik could squash him like a bug with a mere thought, it felt now like Atemu wouldn't even need to think about it; he could do it immediately and feel none the worse for it afterwards.  
  
Frankly, it was terrifying.   
  
"Atemu," the god by his side returned. Just like Atemu, the single word was a threat. They really had to hate each other, the way they generated heated tension between the two of them. "So glad you could come slum with us. You usually don't bother, after all."  
  
Atemu growled, but thankfully, he didn't offer to sit. He didn't think he could handle a being like that sitting in the place Mokuba had just abandoned. He wouldn't be able to eat, whenever the food arrived of course, with a being like that sitting across of him. Having him stand nearly to them was quite enough, thank you very much.  
  
"That brat of a new listener I found has banished me from my rooms. He told me that I was not to return until he had left."  
  
Silently, he applauded the gall of someone to stand up to a forceful person like Atemu. He had barely been in the man's presence for two minutes, and already he was considering taking his little brother and hiding under the table or something. Mokuba was clinging to him even, small hands fisted into the material of his shirt as if his grip on Kaiba was the only thing keeping him alive. From just beneath the table, there was a quiet growl, one that sounded like it should have been miles and miles away; apparently, Gwyllgi had little love for Atemu as well.  
  
"My compliments to the human then. Everyone could stand to kick you out now and then."  
  
Atemu looked even more peeved, but he said nothing. Perhaps there was nothing left to say. "So, Bakura," he continued. Oh well, he'd been wrong before; he couldn't be blamed for it happening now. "Tell me about your pet human there."  
  
Bakura lifted a white eyebrow at the less than pleasant epitaph Atemu had bestowed upon him. "Kaiba was the first human in a hundred generations to be brought into Annwn." Atemu opened his mouth to say something, and Bakura cut right back in again, as if there had been no chance for any interruptions. "And he's mine, Atemu. Don't even think about it."  
  
In response, Atemu repeated the same movement Bakura had done, lifting a single dark eyebrow nearly to the hairline. "I have to say, Bakura: I never would have suspected you of going around kidnapping _humans_."  
  
Kaiba wanted to pipe up. He wanted to say he had agreed to leave with Bakura. He had _chosen_ to be here with the white-haired man. He didn't like any insinuations otherwise. At the same time, though, he didn't want any part in drawing the attention of a being like this down on him. It didn't seem to be conducive to continuing life. He had to say, however, that he had the utmost respect for whoever this other listener was, for being able to give someone like Atemu hell. Whoever he was, then he had Kaiba's respect for that at least.   
  
"How did you think your darling Mana got here?" And that was more a snarl than anything else. He hadn't heard anything even close to that from Bakura before now. The two of them really didn't get along. On that, there had been no exaggeration by anyone on the topic.  
  
Atemu waved off the question impatiently, and he could have sworn that Bakura's eyes narrowed even more than they previously had been. Bakura apparently didn't appreciate being ignored or having things like this pushed aside as if they were nothing. "So where is everyone else?"  
  
Bakura smirked, the look dark and dangerous on his face. "Probably visiting Mana and Mai for the latest gossip on you getting shot down like hell. Tell me there's video – or pictures at the very least! It's not every day I get to hear about someone like _you_ being turned down."  
  
In turn, Atemu now was the one let out a low growl, the sound like something that belonged in a long bygone era where humans were definitely not at the top of the food chain. Mokuba shivered hard enough that he could feel it and clutched tighter to his shirt; if the cloth made it out of this intact, it would be a small miracle. As for he himself, he wanted to shrink back into a small, dark corner where hopefully no one would pay any interest to him.   
  
Abruptly, though, Atemu smirked. "Even if there were pictures, no one would believe it. The listener I found, Ryou, looks just like _you_ , Bakura."


	10. Chapter 10

Okay, now that just sounded entirely too strange for his tastes. So, so far, they had him, this Yuugi person who looked like Atemu, and now a Ryou who looked like Bakura? Why would two of the listeners look like some of the gods? Beyond that, it begged the question of if there was a god he resembled. Was there a god out there, one that he obviously hadn't met yet, who possessed the same features as he did? To him, the idea was quietly terrifying. He preferred to think of himself as unique, but...   
  
If there were two listeners here who were dead ringers for gods, then it would seem likely that the third one must be as well, no matter how little he liked the idea.   
  
If Atemu's pronouncement stunned Bakura even half as much as it did Kaiba, he didn't let it show. Instead, he fired right back, "Well, then it shows he has good tastes, doesn't it, to turn you down flat _and_ look like me? I can't wait to meet him."  
  
"I have no doubt you two will get on like fire."   
  
"Did we miss the fireworks? Aww, damn, have they already starting snipping at each other?" Malik's voice cut through the tension like a knife. He glanced up to see the blond god strolling in with Amane. He was an image of indolence: an arm slung around the waist of the woman at his side and an easy smirk on his face. Clearly, he was enjoying seeing Bakura and Atemu fight, like it was some sort of spectator sport for him. Still, if this was the fireworks portion of the show, he could live without witnessing it again.   
  
"Atemu, must you antagonize my brother so?" Amane chided, still never raising her voice over a loud whisper. Somehow, it was more admonishing that way.   
  
"Hela, Ninurta," Atemu greeted. It sounded like the two names came through gritted teeth. So that answered the question of whom Malik was. He didn't recognize the name, but that didn't mean anything. He hadn't recognized too many names he had heard so far. He would have to go through the rest of Bakura's books and see if he couldn't turn up anything on that name. "So good of you two to join us."   
  
"Of course," Malik replied breezily. He held a hand out for Amane to balance with as she stepped over the bench to sit next to Kaiba, before he slid into the space next to her.   
  
There were hundreds of other spots to sit in this gigantic place, but they chose to sit close to him and Bakura. More to the point, they chose to sit on the same side of the table as Bakura and opposite Atemu. It seemed like a calculated move, one that he was oddly more comfortable associating with Malik than with Amane, intended to show support for Bakura over Atemu. Did they dislike Atemu because of his attitude or solely to support Bakura in his hatred for the other god?   
  
He could believe either one of the two; Atemu had already rubbed him the wrong way, the way he had showed up with all kinds of attitude and arrogance. If it annoyed the hell out of him, a human, then it definitely had to rankle these other gods.   
  
"And Atemu," Amane scolded quietly, "what is the point of changing our names if we don't all use them?" She smiled, all sharp teeth and danger. "Unless you would prefer we switch back to calling you Perun?"  
  
"I can't say it was one of Ahura Mazda's best ideas," Atemu grumbled, finally dropping to sit opposite them. Great, just what he hadn't wanted to happen: Atemu making himself comfortable here.  
  
"Honda," Bakura corrected absently. "His name is Honda now."  
  
Honda? That was– No. No way. Surely it had to be another Honda. It couldn't have been the same Honda who had been in the room next to his at the hospital, the one who had committed suicide not too long before Bakura had arrived.  
  
"I think it's an absolutely brilliant idea," Malik commented idly. Kaiba glanced past Amane to see the blond making himself comfortable, swinging his legs up to take up a good chunk of the bench next to where he sat. "Why should we be stuck being faithful to the old pantheons anymore? Most of us are the only survivors of our pantheons," Malik observed.   
  
Now that was an unnerving thought. Bakura had said that the daevas made killing the gods look easy, but somehow he hadn't imagined it being so bad or so widespread. How many pantheons were there out there in the world? If most of those were down to one god remaining, then dear gods, how many had been cut down already? Hundreds at the least, surely. Every little bit of information he was able to parse out on the daevas made him wish the creatures didn't exist at all, because anything that could take gods so easily would quickly make mincemeat out of every human on the planet. Worse, so many humans didn't believe in the things that went bump in the night; he knew he hadn't before Bakura; so they would be caught utterly unaware if the gods didn't succeed.  
  
Then again, apparently, if the gods didn't succeed and were in fact all killed, then at least three gods -- if not more, reading between the lines of what Bakura had said – capable of ending the world would be released, so maybe not too many humans would fall prey to the daevas before the world ended.   
  
Amane was nodding in agreement with her – with Malik; that was still something he didn't to place too much thought into. "I would like to believe," she commented softly, "that we are forming our own pantheon, with as few of the old prejudices as possible." Okay, that was a dig at either Atemu, Bakura, or the both of them and their ongoing rivalry. "I would like to believe that we can move beyond the old lines and be all the stronger for it."  
  
"I could get behind that," another familiar voice piped up. Seconds later, Jounouchi dropped down to sit next to Atemu. Unlike Malik and Amane, it didn't seem to be a calculate move. Instead, it seemed to have more to do with that being an empty seat, so he had laid claim to it. "Food?"  
  
"It's on the way," Bakura replied, glancing over at a door he hadn't noticed before. Seconds later, nearly translucent shades of people began carrying in food, much of which he couldn't readily identify. It seemed to cover the world – or at least the nations represented at this table. Of the myriad dishes that were eventually set down, the bowl of apples held before Amane for her to choose a single one was a bit incongruous.  
  
"Thank you," she stated simply to the shade who had offered the dish to her as she took one. The shade nodded and retreated back through the side door, which must have lead to a kitchen or something.  
  
His confusion must have showed on his face because Bakura leaned closer to explain, "Amane is Norse. Their immortality and youth are maintained by those apples."   
  
"Really?" he whispered back, taking a glance to the side to see Amane take a huge bite into the apple she had selected.   
  
Bakura nodded. "We only have so many, though. Hera had an orchard in the far western corner of the world, but the daevas seem to have destroyed it. We haven't been able to find it since they turned up in Greece. The only orchard left is in Asgard, and that's been iffy at best with fruit."  
  
Okay, now that just sounded odd. It sounded to him, again reading between the lines, like these apples could grant anyone immortality, at least as long as they had at least one a day. Irreverently, the thought occurred to him that maybe that was where the expression about an apple a day keeping the doctor away had come from.   
He glanced around, taking in the relative number of gods sitting at the table. There weren't that many: Bakura, Amane, Malik, Jounouchi, and Atemu. Surely, there had to be more gods here than just these five. Okay, they had mentioned three more – Honda, Mana, and Mai, even if he was a bit uncertain if Mana was a goddess or a human like him – which still made a small number compared to what it sounded like they were facing.   
  
"Is this everyone?" he hissed back over to Bakura.  
  
The white-haired man took a quick glance around and then shook his head. "Nah, Mana and Mai aren't here. Honda should be showing up sooner or later. He and Malik don't really get along too well, so we try to keep them separated." They kept Malik and Honda separated, while instead they all but sold tickets to Atemu and Bakura's arguments? That didn't make a lot of sense to him, but what did he know about this? Group dynamics weren't exactly his strong suit, what with the lack thereof he had known until now. He had always been a bit of a loner, partially by necessity and partially by choice. "I think–" He glanced across the table and spoke up a bit louder. "Hey, Jounouchi, is Varon still out and about?"  
  
The blond man rolled amber eyes exaggeratedly. "Yeah, last I heard, he's still on walkabout. Did we need him back for anything?"  
  
Bakura shook his head. "Nah, I'm just trying to get an idea who's here and who isn't." Jounouchi cast a glance over at him, as if guessing that he was why Bakura wanted to know. Thankfully, though, he didn't say anything. "So where's this Yuugi guy?"  
  
Jounouchi shook his head. "He decided he wasn't quite ready to meet even this many gods at once. I'm going to bring him something back to eat. Maybe next time, though." Amber eyes turned to Kaiba. "Maybe if he knows there are other humans here..."  
  
"Maybe so," he offered quietly, barely speaking any louder than Amane would have. He glanced across from him to make certain he hadn't attracted too much attention.   
  
Thankfully, though, Atemu's attention seemed to be fixed on a brunette slipping in the main doorway accompanied by a much taller blonde woman. So maybe this was Mana and Mai? The brunette lacked the air of power that all the gods had, so if Mana was indeed human, then this must be Mana; that meant the blonde was Mai – and Persephone. All these names were a bit confusing; he could see why they wanted to pick one name and stick with it.   
  
The brunette, Mana, slid into the seat next to Atemu. Meanwhile, the blonde, Mai, sat down beside Jounouchi. "Rumor has it you had some good luck last night, little brother," she purred.   
  
Jounouchi shrugged nonchalantly, even if he barely glanced away from the food in front of him. "More or less, I suppose. Between me, Atemu, and Bakura, we have three listeners here now." Mai's indigo eyes turned to him, and he fought the urge to squirm in his seat.   
  
He might not have been in the least bit interested in her or even someone like her, but it was still unnerving to have someone as beautiful as her staring directly at him. Mai was... Well, it was no wonder that she was the Goddess of Spring.  
  
"So you're Kaiba, right?" she demanded, her voice one of someone clearly used to commanding attention. He nodded, quietly pleased to himself that he didn't shake in the least in the movement. "Glad to meet you. I guess you know I'm Mai. Don't let anyone tell you different, but I'm second-in-command around here. If there's anything you need and you can't find Kura there, you come get me. I'll take care of you."  
  
'Kura'? Now that was an interesting nickname. Somehow it seemed to fit Bakura too. "All right," he answered, still not raising his voice.   
  
It was too late, though: a glance out of the corner of his eye showed blood-red eyes fixed directly on him. He couldn't remember a time ever in his life where he had felt less like a person and more like an object to be appraised. Somehow he got the feeling he was being assessed, weighed, measured, and ultimately rejected from the potential pool of people to grace Atemu's bed. A quick glance to the side revealed Mana stirring listlessly at the food in front of her. As luck would have it, however, Atemu followed his gaze back over to the brunette at his side and returned all his attention to her.   
  
A glance to first Bakura then Mai revealed both of them rolling their eyes heavily, the white-haired man at his side miming slapping the hell out of someone and the blonde woman smothering giggles into her napkin. Perhaps it would be safe to venture a guess that neither of them approved of Atemu making the rounds on Mana. He had to wonder, why didn't she say something or do something about it? Or maybe they weren't together. Maybe he was just reading too much into this. He had never really had the imagination for coming up with stuff like this anyway. He had always left the imagination part to Mokuba – and that suddenly made a whole lot more sense now, knowing what he did.  
  
To some extent, he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop on that particular little revelation. Mokuba was still his brother in the ways that counted. They shared a mother, if not a father. Maybe they weren't related by blood, but they had stuck together through thick and thin. A minor bombshell like Mokuba not even being human wasn't going to do a thing to change that. As Mokuba had reminded him: they were Kaibas, and Kaibas stuck together.   
  
"So what's the news going around on the top side?" Bakura asked, once most of the food seemed to be gone, and everyone was starting to truly settle in.  
  
"There were daevas spotted about two hundred kilometers from Glastonbury Tor, two nights ago," Malik reported, a suddenly seriously turn in his voice, one that Kaiba might not have suspected given what he knew of the blond so far. "Varon's leading them around in circles right now, but they're getting closer to the door to Annwn." He sighed heavily. "It's only a matter of time now."  
  
Amane leaned closer to him, settling her head on his shoulder. "Two hundred kilometers is getting way too close. Pretty soon they'll be knocking on the front door." She glanced past Kaiba to favor Bakura a smirk. "If we had a front door of course."  
  
"How many people?" To his surprise, that came from Mana. She had barely glanced up from the plate still in front of her and her face looked nearly lifeless, but it had been her who spoke. When another second or two passed without response, she further clarified, "How many people did the daevas get to?"  
  
"Forty," Amane responded finally. "Mostly tourists and hikers. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. Chances are good, though, that someone is going to start taking notice soon, and then we really will be in trouble."  
  
"No, we won't," Malik commented almost cheerfully. Looking around Amane, he could see a manic grin on the blonde’s face. "We'll be screwed blue."  
  
Mai rolled her eyes and pushed herself to her feet. "And I think that's my cue to get out of here. Have you gotten the tour of the place yet, Kaiba?"   
  
He nearly started off his seat, completely not expecting to be spoken to again any time soon. Soon, though, he was able to answer. "No, not really."  
  
"Come on then. I'll give you the two quid tour. I'm sure you have questions."  
  
Helplessly, he turned back to look at Bakura. The white-haired man nodded. "Go on. Mai's good people. She'll make sure you're okay. Besides, we're just going to plot war. It won't be that interesting."  
  
"All right," he responded quietly, pushing himself to his feet, setting Mokuba down as he did so, and stepping back over the bench. He was in no way surprised when Gwyllgi wiggled out from under the table as well to trail close to Mokuba. The giant dog seemed to have taken a real shine to his little brother.   
  
"I'll find you when we're done," Bakura promised before he could even think of extracting such a vow. Either there was mind reading going on there, which he still didn't like the thought of, or else Bakura was coming to know him well enough to judge what he was about to say. That wasn't very reassuring either, not after only five days.  
"All right," he answered slowly, slowly rounding the table to meet Mai at the door.   
  
Honestly, he felt a bit like he was leading a processional, with both Mokuba and Gwyllgi following him. Of course, he was following Mai, so let her be the one to deal with the line that was building up. She was probably much better equipped to deal with it.  
  
Once they were out of the dining hall area, Mai finally spoke up again. "So I have your name, and Gwyllgi's an old friend of mine, but I don't know the kid." She grinned over her shoulder at them.  
  
"Mokuba," Kaiba answered, "my little brother." He debated on adding the bit about him being a changeling, but rather instead, he felt the need to play that one close to his chest. Only Bakura and Jounouchi had been able to tell that about his brother right away, so maybe it might be best kept quiet, at least until he knew Mai better. Just because his first instinctive thought was to trust this woman in front of him did not mean he should just give in to the urge.   
  
"Pleased to meet you then, Mokuba."  
  
"Same here," Mokuba answered quickly. He might have worried about that, thought perhaps something was wrong from how fast that answer came. It was fairly obviously why, though, now that he took a closer glance at the boy. Mokuba's eyes were fixed like glue on Mai's (frankly impressive) chest, and it seemed to have his complete and utter attention. He wasn't even thinking about what he was saying.  
  
Mai finally glanced back again in time to catch Mokuba staring -- and to his surprise only laughed. Some confusion must have showed on his face because she then proceeded to explain, "I get that way more often than you'd think. What can you do? They're there, and a lot of guys like to talk to them. Some chicks do too, interested or not, though that's a whole other thing. I have to say: you might be the second person who hasn't decided to direct all conversation at my chest instead of my face," she shrugged, obviously relenting, "after Bakura."  
  
"You're really Persephone?" he blurted out. He hadn't meant to say it, and really, if he could take it back, he probably would have. It seemed incredibly rude, even more so than talking to Mai's breasts.  
  
To his relief, she only laughed. "Now that's one I haven't gotten in a long time. Yep, I'm Persephone, Goddess of Spring." She grinned shrewdly. "And no, you have nothing to worry about from me. I have no claim over Kura except as a friend. I might be his best friend in fact, discounting his adopted little sister."  
  
"Is that why you're second-in-command here?"  
  
"That has more to do with the legends. Once they're told enough and believed in enough, they gain a power of their own. And in the legends, Persephone is Queen of the Underworld. Therefore..." She trailed off, looking at him expectantly.  
  
"Therefore Mai is second-in-command of the Otherworld – of Annwn," he corrected himself. "It makes sense. Bakura was saying something about, without belief, you gods not being as strong as you could be."  
  
"Kura's being self-deprecating. There are enough Neo Pagans in the world that some of us still have worshippers. It's just not enough to bring us back to our old strengths. If we were still at our old strength, this war would have been over years ago." She sighed. "Unfortunately, though, fighting this war became more important that maintaining worshippers, so we fell out and started losing power. All of us are so much less than we once were. I mean, we're a tenth of what we used to be."  
  
"A tenth?" He could admit it: he squeaked that one out. Each one of these gods' powers was nearly overwhelming his senses, even with them not doing anything, and that was with them weakened. If they had been at full power... He probably wouldn't have been able to stand it. Then again, if they were at full power, they wouldn't have need listeners. "No offense, but I'm already reeling off what I'm picking up from you. Anything more, and..." This time, it was he who trailed off.  
  
"I can imagine," Mai agreed with a nod. "Mana said much the same thing when Kura brought her here, and even then we were weakened."  
  
"Mana is... Is Mana human?" He had to ask. He had to know. There was just something unsettling about the other woman, and he had to work out exactly what it was.  
  
"In a way," Mai shrugged in answer. "She's been here a really long time, a good few thousand years, since her father died." She leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially at a stage whisper just loud enough for Mokuba to hear too. It seemed she wasn't trying to keep this a secret from Mokuba, but was instead letting him in on a secret. "Apparently, she didn't much care for her suitor and found the Otherworld preferable to his presence." She laughed brightly. "I can relate. I got Kura to 'nap me because I was sick of my mother being so overbearing, not to mention Apollo not being able to catch a hint about things being over. Kura seems to have a soft spot for people in situations like that, and I'm ever so glad for it."  
  
"I can't say I was in a good place either before Bakura brought me here," he admitted. Mai arched a single elegant eyebrow, and he felt compelled to continue. "I was in a state hospital for the insane. I mean, they don't call it that, but that's really what it is: a place to hide away the crazies."  
  
She lifted a finger to her lips and studied him intently. "Pardon me for saying it, Kaiba, but you don't seem to crazy to me."  
  
"I could hear the gods talking." He glanced to the side at where his brother stood looking sheepish. "Also no one believed me that my brother was standing right there beside me."  
  
"So hearing voices and hallucinating, as far as they knew," she surmised. "No wonder they thought you were crazy. I probably would have too. But crazy fits right in around here, so you don't have to worry on that front. So, you must have questions. I know this place keeps Kura too busy to stay around long enough to answer them, so I'll see what I can do. Hit me with 'em."  
  
"What is this place, exactly?" he blurted out. After all, as blunt as Mai seemed to be already, there was every chance she would tell it all to him exactly as it was, no holds barred. Bakura might have been inclined to tell him the whole truth as well, but then Bakura also liked him and wanted him to stay; that was a reason there not to say everything, not to share the bad parts.  
  
"Well, that's fairly to the point now, isn't it?" She didn't seem upset though; in fact, he would venture a guess to say he had amused her a bit. Not a lot or anything but some all the same; and he was going to temporarily place that in the 'good' category. "All right."  
  
She turned on her heel and stalked into another doorway, as he trailed after her. Honestly, this place was huge. There was every chance that he wasn't going to find his way back. Well, at least they had Gwyllgi with them; perhaps the hound could do what he himself couldn't.  
  
Mai turned down another hall then one more before finally opening a door into a room at least as big as Bakura's suites. Actually, he would venture a guess as to say it was bigger. Of course, everyone talked about 'Mai and Mana' or 'Mana and Mai', so maybe the two women shared a common living space. It would have been larger in that case. Two people versus one, ruler of the realm or not, more space was a definite.   
  
Mai caught him looking around and grinned. "I share this place with Mana. Honestly, it's easiest for two single women to share than both of us trying to live alone. Annwn is like the human world in that respect."  
  
‘Single’? "I thought–"  
  
"Mana and Atemu?" she guessed, even if it didn't sound too much like a question, and in answer, he nodded. "She's been pining after him since he first showed up. The guy's not my type; I demand faithfulness, and Atemu is not one to give that to anyone, like any one of the All Fathers; but she has it bad for him." She flopped down on a sofa, dislodging a few magazines as she fell. He recognized the cover of a couple of them: some of the nurses at the hospital had read them less than a week ago. What that meant, except that obviously no one was confined here, he didn't know.   
  
That wasn't why he was here anyway. He sat down cautiously in a chair across from Mai's sofa, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mokuba and Gwyllgi wandering into the rest of the place. "So?" he prompted.  
  
"So, yes, you want to know what Annwn is." He nodded. "Annwn is the Otherworld in these parts." He started to speak up, to ask another question, but Mai carried on as if he hadn't even attempted to speak. "As for where we are, roughly, we're below Wales. This is the old Welsh afterlife, where no one has come since the days of King Arthur. Annwn is one of the places where the dead used to go once they shuffled the mortal coil, but not so much lately." She grinned conspiratorially. "It's also the home of the Tylwyth Teg, the Fair Folk or the fairies," she translated before he could ask.  
  
"Bakura mentioned them. Something about how they all fled."  
  
"Yes, they did." Mai seemed a bit saddened by that. But then, these creatures could have been great allies in a war where they needed all the help they could get, and instead they ran away. "I don't know if they found a better bit of fairy land to hide or if they're trying to blend in with the humans now, but they have abandoned Annwn."  
  
"You could have used them," he surmised.  
  
To no shock, Mai snorted inelegantly. "Damn straight we could have used them. The Fair Folk can't do a lot more than cast glamours, curdle milk, and replace children with their own, but they could have set the daevas to chasing their tails for a bit."  
  
"So," he ventured again after a few moments, "if Annwn is all those things, then–"  
  
"Then, yes, Bakura does rule Annwn. Because he rules Annwn, he's also technically the King of the Fair Folk, but right now..." She trailed her words off, wincing.   
  
When he thought about it some more, he winced as well. It would be hard to rule a nation with no people. "So the dead that are here..."  
  
"Died millennia ago. Most of them just enjoy the afterlife. Some of them miss their old lives, and we find the things to do that are close, like the dead you saw earlier with lunch."  
  
"Okay," he answered. He paused a moment, trying to think of what he was going to say before he let the next question rush out. In the end, though, there was really no other way to do it. "What am I getting involved with here?"  
  
Mai only looked vaguely puzzled, which was somewhat amazing considering he wasn't even completely certain what he had been trying to ask. Still, she did have to ask to clarify, "Getting involved with the war or getting involved with Kura?"  
  
"Either. Both." He sighed, raking a hand through his hair. "I figure, you've known Bakura about the longest of anyone here. If you don't mind me saying," she in turn gestured for him to continue speaking, "I like him – a lot, in truth – but I need to know what I'm doing, what's going on."  
  
The blond woman nodded. "You're the opposite of me. I tend to leap in head first without studying all the angles. Kura is... Kura's a death god. He doesn't– None of us hold a lot of sway in the every day world, not anymore, Neo Pagans or not, but to some extent, that still means something. It means he's intense, somewhat pathological, and perhaps a little OCD. He doesn't do things without reasons, and I'm sure that includes bringing you here."  
"I'm here to help in this war, to try to listen in on the daevas' plans."  
  
And she shook her head. "No, Kaiba, sweetie. Like you said, I know Kura, and I have known him the longest of everyone here. He had another reason for bringing you here besides just that. Otherwise, you wouldn't still be staying in his suites. He wouldn't be acting like a dryad with a crush around you: all slow caution and caring. If you were only here to assist in the war, he would probably treat you like he treats Jounouchi. You saw that, right?" He nodded a yes, and Mai continued. "He treats you very differently, like I haven't seen a god treat someone in years." She chuckled, but it didn't sound amused. "Kura definitely cares for you, Kaiba. Make no mistake about that. And if you decide to stay here with him, you would be treated well, better than the human world could ever provide."  
  
"You have known him a long time." They had both said it before, but really, it bore repeating once again. "And then there's all the legends..." He took a deep breath that hurt all the way in. "Are you and Bakura--"  
  
This time, Mai's laugh sounded very genuine, and she almost rolled off the couch with the force of it. Clearly, he had said something that amused her again. "Me and Kura?" she wheezed out. "Together? Not a chance in– Well, not a chance in hell. Kura's never shown any interest in anyone, aside from kidnapping people out of bad situations. He's never shown the kind of interest I've seen him show you _ever_. I think it's good for him. I haven't seen him so alive in forever. And yeah, maybe I should be jealous, but mostly, I'm just happy. It makes me happy to see Kura happy. If you can make him happy, then you're my new second best friend," she winked, "after Kura."  
  
"So you two never..." God, he was doing a lot of trailing off today, and he was starting to feel like the flush was going to be permanently stuck to his face. He had to get his answers now, though. He wasn't too sure he would have the nerve to ask again later. "You never..."  
  
"Jumped his bones?" she filled in. "Saved a horse, rode a death god? Get all up in that? Any of those other amusing little human phrases for 'fucked his brains out'?" Weakly he nodded, and again she laughed. "Nope, the two of us never bumped pelvises. I might have offered a time or thirty, but nope." She sighed, though the cheerful look never faded from her face. "I grew up in the Greek pantheon, but you would find it in almost every other one if you looked hard enough. Very, very few gods are loyal to only one lover. My father had more bastards than a dog has fleas, even if he only had the one wife. My mother never married, but if she took other lovers after my father, she was discreet about it. That was the way of life for us back then. I think some of the ones of us who are still here are unique in that we crave one person to spend the rest of eternity with. Amane has found that with Malik, and I'm starting to think Kura might have found that with you. Now we just need to get the rest of us settled down."  
  
"And win the war," he finished.  
  
"And win the war," Mai repeated. "I have to say, though: you are a confident one, Kaiba. We are vastly outnumbered, our list of allies is growing thin, and our enemies are numerous."  
  
"But now you have three spies who can tell you their plans," he countered. He wasn't going to let himself delve into the possibilities that any part of this ridiculous plan could go wrong. There were just too many of them. "I have to know, though, Mai. If you and Bakura aren't... together," he hedged diplomatically," and you never have been together... Why are you second-in-command?"  
  
"What's the legend of Hades and Persephone?" She didn't even give him a chance to answer before she pressed on. "Hades kidnaps Persephone to the Underworld. While she's there, she eats several seeds from a pomegranate. Because she's tasted the food of the Land of the Dead, when it comes time for Hades to release her, she has to promise to return for several months out of the year every year to be the Queen of the Underworld.   
  
“That isn't... exactly how it happened. I asked Kura to kidnap me away from Mother and Apollo, and I eventually volunteered to help rule the dead. They need the touch of both a god and a goddess in truth. Mother pitched an unholy fit, so I agreed to come back to Olympus several months out of the year, and that arrangement lasted until the daevas appeared on Olympus and the slaughter began." She offered him a weak smile. "So now I'm the full-time Goddess of the Underworld. I run Annwn when Kura isn't here; I see to the needs of the dead – and there are a surprising lot – and I deal with the hounds."  
  
"'The hounds'?" he echoed. He had almost forgotten about that, that Bakura had said that there were more hounds here besides Gwyllgi. "There's more than one?"  
  
She laughed again, tilting her head back to let a full-throated and very unladylike laugh escape her. "There is an entire pack here, if not several. The Cŵn Annwn -- the hounds of Annwn -- and Black Shuck are probably all in residence. As for the others, I don't know. They might be around."  
  
"When I first met Bakura, he didn't strike me as a dog person," he had to admit. "Meeting Gwyllgi came as quite a surprise."  
  
"Gwyllgi in general likes to be a surprise. Don't let his big, dumb ox of a dog look he has fool you; he's one of the smartest creatures I know of -- and I know of quite a lot." She glanced around, apparently trying to see where Mokuba and the dog in question where. "I can take you to meet the ones that are here if you would like."  
"I would. I know Mokuba would too, if that's all right."  
  
She shook her head. "No problem. Go grab the kid. I'll wait."  
  
He headed back into the back part of the suite of rooms where Mokuba and Gwyllgi had vanished earlier. It was really no surprise that he found his little brother going through someone's belongings. He had always had this sort of insatiable curiosity; he supposed it made sense now.   
  
"Come on, Mokuba," he called. Once his brother looked up at him, a questioning expression on his face, he elaborated. "Mai's going to take us to go see the other hounds."  
  
"Really? Let's go then!" The words were almost shrieked out, and he had to fight the urge to cover his ears. Mokuba had always had volume control issues. Maybe that was another thing explained as well.  
  
"Excited that much, are we?" Mai's voice commented from the doorway. She sounded a lot calmer than she had during their little story time, so maybe the brief break had done her some good.  
  
"Is it far?" His brother was all but jumping up and down in joy. He had been excited about the idea of these hounds from the first moment they had heard Gwyllgi howl. "Can we go now?"  
  
"Yeah, sure," Mai agreed. "Come on, kid."   
  
Mokuba was after her like a light, and he found himself trailing behind, an oversized hound at his side. Really, he had gotten so used to seeing Gwyllgi towering next to Mokuba that he hadn't thought to see him next to himself; the hound measured up to the bottom of his ribcage. If there was ever any doubt that this dog was something supernatural, the size alone should have been a dead giveaway.   
  
Gwyllgi was plodding slowly next to him, almost like he was pouting, and without thought, he commented, "I'm sure you'll still be his favorite even after the meet-and-greet, Gwyllgi. Don't worry too much about it."  
  
The oversized dog bumped against his side, apparently in a form of agreement, and it nearly knocked him down.  
"We do need to have a talk about hound to human weight ratios and how you're going to knock me the hell down if you do that again, though. Just so you know."  
  
He could have sworn the dog laughed through the chuffing breaths he took.


	11. Chapter 11

He wasn’t too sure what he had been expecting for when he finally met the other two listeners: Yuugi and Ryou. All he really had had to go on was that they respectively looked like Atemu and Bakura – and that Ryou had turned Atemu down hard. Honestly, that wasn’t nearly as impressive to him as the fact that Ryou had apparently run Atemu out of his own living area for the time being.   
  
Having met Atemu now, he was willing to be quite impressed that Ryou had managed that without a freaking panic attack. Or maybe that part hadn’t made it into the story the gods were passing around. It didn’t really seem like something that would make it into the epic tales.  
  
Of course, that was assuming that there was going to be anyone left to tell epic tales about all of this. The more he heard about the backup plan, the one regarding Amane’s two older brothers, the less confident on everyone surviving this he started to feel.   
  
At least they seemed to have hashed out the so-called fail safe enough that it didn’t need to be brought up too often. Though, to be fair, the idea of having a plan of what to do and how everything was going to go down after you and all your allies were dead, it seemed a bit morbid to him. It seemed a bit self-defeatist to be honest, as far as he could tell.  
  
But maybe that was just him. After all, he didn’t have to worry about anyone but himself and Mokuba, much less the entire population of the planet. Frankly, though, that was something he really didn’t even want to _imagine_. Taking care of his younger brother, changeling or not, was more than enough for him.  
  
And yet here he was: getting ready to pitch in where he could in a fight that was way out of his weight class. Yeah, he must still be crazy, no matter what Mai – Persephone, and wasn’t that a head-trip – had said before.   
Still, there was no time like the present for flinging himself into the thick of this.   
  
He took a deep breath and finally knocked on the door before him. Mai had guided him this far before turning and heading in another direction, declaring she needed to get back to the war summit before Bakura, Amane, and Malik decided to gang up on Atemu. Honestly, to him, it had sounded a lot more like she wanted to sell tickets to the event than try to prevent it, which in turn kept bringing him back to the question of why they kept Malik and Honda separated but not Bakura and Atemu.   
  
Well, better men than he was had tried to decipher the inner workings of the gods and failed miserably. Who was he to think he could do any better?   
  
He barely heard the door before him open, but there was no mistaking the cheerful (if slightly nervous) voice that broke through his reverie. "You must be Kaiba," it said. "Jounouchi-kun said you would be by."  
  
Okay, intellectually, he had been expecting to see a resemblance between Yuugi and Atemu, given how much they were talking about that at lunch. Hearing about it and seeing it were two totally different things, though, he supposed, because he was feeling a bit shell-shocked looking down at the young man before him.   
  
Jounouchi had definitely been right: Yuugi was a bit shorter than Atemu. Any idiot could tell that immediately. It was his eyes that were the most immediate and visible difference between them though. Atemu’s were blood red and fairly shone with the power of the ages, while Yuugi’s were a brilliant purple, a shade he would not have ever thought possible in nature, and appeared to be alight with naivety. No, not naivety: innocence.  
  
Bluntly put, it was an amazing difference between the two of them, even with all the similarities between them. It was like comparing midnight and midday; as far as he could see, they were as different as light and dark.  
Somehow, he recovered his voice before there was too much of a chance for him to appear crazier than he already was. “I am Kaiba, yes. You must be Yuugi,” he returned.   
  
And there it was again: that damned formality that immerged when he was nervous, and oddly he was right now, more than he wanted to admit to. And Mokuba had so gleefully informed him many a time that, when he started letting the formality out, he sounded like he had his head stuck up his ass.  
  
From the way Yuugi was biting his lower lip, worrying with it back and forth, it must have been out with a vengeance. He probably sounded like he thought Yuugi was miles below him or something. Damn Gouzaburou for driving that into him.  
  
Immediately, though, his mind rebelled against the very thought of going against his uncle. He successfully fought the urge to shiver at the thought, even though his body truly wanted to, as if in the memory of some long-forgotten pain.   
  
Instead, hesitantly, he offered his hand. “Bakura and Mai said we should meet. It seems like there’s no time like the present, right?” He held back a wince. That had sounded less like a question or even a gentle prompting than a statement, maybe even a demand.   
  
“Yeah, I guess so.”   
  
“Damn it, I’m no good at this,” he muttered, barely aware he had said anything, at least until Yuugi grinned. “What?”  
  
“I’m no good at meeting new people either.” Damn, this guy was almost unnaturally shrewd, and he honestly couldn’t say for certain yet if he liked it or not. “That’s kind of reassuring. I hate feeling all socially awkward just because it’s sometimes hard to tell if the voices I’m hearing are the people in front of me or the ones in my head.”   
  
Once more he had to fight the urge to react, this time to shake his head to clear it. He had known that both Yuugi and Ryou were listeners like him and Bakura had said that listeners tended to be schizophrenics, but he had never expected to hear it just blithely stated like that, like it was just a fact of everyday life. In a lot of ways, it was. It had been for him, so he would have to imagine that it had been for the other two listeners. He just couldn’t imagine saying something like that, especially to a complete stranger. The mere thought of it was almost enough to freeze him up completely.   
  
“So is it just the two of us?” Yuugi continued easily. “I could swear Jounouchi-kun said something about a third person.”   
  
“Ryou,” he managed to get out. “The third person is Ryou.”  
  
“So let’s go meet this Ryou.” Without another word, Yuugi grabbed his arm just above the wrist and pulled him out the door. The second he closed the door after himself, though, he paused. “I don’t suppose you know where he is, do you?”  
  
He nodded, grabbing the map Mai had sketched out for him on a scrap of paper. From what he could tell, Ryou was still in Atemu’s rooms, which actually weren’t that far from Jounouchi’s – and wasn’t that a saving grace? He had had enough already of getting lost in this place.   
  
“Here.” He offered it over to Yuugi with some degree of hesitation himself. First off, Mai had given that to him, not Yuugi, and moreover, he hardly knew Yuugi at all. He wasn’t sure yet if he could trust him.   
  
On the flipside of all of that, though, the people here had shown him incredible levels of trust for not knowing him, accepting him on Bakura’s word alone that he was kosher; the least he could do was the same. And besides that, he was horrible with maps. There had been a reason for Mai to lead him here, besides this place being on her way back to the main hall.  
  
Yuugi, it seemed, on the other hand, was an old pro at them. He took a few long glances at the hastily scribbled drawing, nodded once to himself, and started down the hall to the right, the opposite direction of the way Mai had gone. Never once did he release his hold on Kaiba’s arm, and that was just a bit too weird. It was even too weird to shake the offending hand off. Instead he just went along with Yuugi’s whim.  
  
Something gave him the feeling that Yuugi was very used to his whims being indulged. He definitely hadn’t been in a hospital with his schizophrenia, not with an attitude like that. Nope, somehow he must have remained with friends or family who went along with whatever he said.   
  
Kaiba couldn’t imagine such a thing. He didn’t even really remember his parents, but Gouzaburou never would have permitted something like that. The man just wasn’t wired that way, not with the way he had to control everything, whether it – he – wanted to be controlled or not.  
  
He fought back another shudder, vaguely wondering where all this was coming from today, what had jarred it loose, when Yuugi dragged him to a stop in front of a door just like every other one they had passed. “This looks like it,” the shorter man declared, looking up at him expectantly.  
  
So it was going to be his job to knock on all the doors? Good to know. At least this was going to be the last one, barring them turning up any other listeners anytime soon. Frankly, he didn’t think he could handle any more lookalikes, personally. The last thing they needed, after all, was someone wandering around looking like Mai – or worse, Malik. The world just wasn’t ready for that.  
  
Pushing all of that aside, he tapped on the door. This time, he couldn’t quite hold back a start at the snarled voice coming from the other side of the door: “I told you: you’re not getting back in here.”  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Yuugi glance up at him, fear in his purple eyes. No, he wasn’t going to be the one indulging Yuugi on this one.   
  
Instead, Kaiba called back, “We’re not Atemu.”  
  
A few seconds later, there was the sound of someone scrambling on the other side of the door, almost like that someone had taken the time to not only lock the door, but block it off too. Atemu clearly must not have made a good impression, if Ryou was willing to go to all these lengths to keep the god away from him.  
  
Eventually, however, the door opened, and he was faced with a near clone of Bakura. Again, Ryou was shorter, much like Yuugi had been in comparison to Atemu, and his eyes were a deep shade of chocolate brown. He hadn’t thought of it until now, but Ryou’s hair was also a good deal more restrained than Bakura’s ever was. Of course, Bakura had a tendency that he had noticed to run a hand through his hair when he was thinking or nervous or upset; it wouldn’t take too long before the hair just gave up on trying to be ordered.   
  
But still, any way he looked at it, both Yuugi and Ryou were near perfect clones of Atemu and Bakura. How that could be, he had no idea at all, but then all this was well and truly beyond him.   
  
What he had been thinking earlier had to still hold true though: if something was true for two out of the three listeners, then surely it had be true for the third one as well. So if Yuugi and Ryou looked like two of the gods, then there had to be one out there who looked like him. Or maybe that was, that he looked like. He wasn’t too certain which one would be accurate, and he wasn’t too certain he wanted to know anyway. It could prove important later, though, so he made a mental note to ask Bakura first thing when he saw him again.  
  
That was, after he asked Bakura to lead him back to where he had left Mokuba with the hounds. It had seemed safest, since he knew nothing about these two. Gwyllgi was with Mokuba, so he would be safe, of that he could be certain.  
  
Yuugi looked briefly nervous for a long moment, long enough that Kaiba was starting to wonder if he was going to have to come up with a way to start this conversation ball thing rolling once again – and God, he was dreading even the thought of that – but then he grinned brightly and held out a hand. “Hi! I’m Yuugi, and this is Kaiba.” A bewildered expression on his face, Ryou accepted the proffered hand, shaking it limply. “You have to be Ryou.”  
  
Dark brown eyes cast down, locking onto the floor. “Y-yes, I’m Ryou. Pleased to m-meet you.”  
  
Okay, this was the guy who had thrown Atemu out of his own rooms? No way, just no way. He was too quiet, too soft-spoken to have tossed someone like Atemu out on his ass. It just didn’t make sense.  
  
“Can we...?” Yuugi prompted, nodding towards the rest of the room behind the door. Ryou had yet to move out of the doorway anyway, holding the door in front of him like some sort of shield.  
  
At Yuugi’s prompting, though, Ryou all but squeaked and flushed. While he wasn’t nearly as pale as Bakura, he was still light enough that the flush building on his face and spreading down into his neck stood out brilliantly. “I’m sorry. Please, come in.”  
  
Yuugi was in the room almost as soon as Ryou had stepped out of the way, while he tried to follow at a more sedate pace.   
  
At first glance, everything in this room practically screamed that it belonged to Atemu. What it was about it that did so, he wasn’t too sure. It wasn’t like anything in here was particularly opulent, to fit that manner that Atemu seemed to have, as if he was the ruler here.   
  
Honestly, maybe that was part of the case. There were too few gods from too many pantheons. The ones who had survived so far seemed to be, from his limited research, higher ranking. There were too many people used to setting the rules and not enough left who were used to following.   
  
After all, from what he had picked up, they had the Queen of the Underworld in Mai, the King of the Fairies in Bakura, and an All Father (which seemed to mean the ruler of a pantheon) in Atemu. Aside from those three, there was Malik who was surely a war god of some sort, Amane as another death god, and Jounouchi as some sort of a healer. Finally then, there were the ones he had only heard of in passing: Honda or Ahura Mazda and Varon or whoever his godly counterpart was.  
  
If this was the entire revolution, then yeah, maybe Malik was right. Maybe they were screwed. Malik had been more descriptive when he said it though. If Kaiba was recalling correctly, Malik had phrased it as ‘screwed blue’.   
  
Surely, there had to be more people than just the ones he had seen or heard of. It just didn’t make sense any other way. Either way, though, now suddenly the desperation to acquire listeners suddenly made a lot more sense. It was like it had taken meeting these two other men had finally brought the point home.  
  
Glancing around a bit further, somehow he wasn’t too surprised to see a small duffle bag tucked into a corner, while still within easy reach of the door. Honestly, Ryou’s bag was very much like his own, the product of too many years being shuffled system to system. Suddenly, it made a lot more sense why he had been able to throw Atemu out. He couldn’t say he had high hopes of befriending Ryou, not any more than he had for becoming friends with Yuugi. While he and Yuugi probably came from just too separate of backgrounds, he and Ryou probably came from too similar of backgrounds.  
  
At least he was fairly certain that they hadn’t been in the same institutions at the same time or anything. He was absolutely certain that he would have remembered someone who looked like Ryou, especially in light of meeting Bakura. After seeing Bakura, if he had ever met Ryou, the meeting would have damn sure stood out in his mind.  
“Sorry,” Ryou apologized, apparently to the room at large. “This was Atemu’s place, and well...”  
  
Kaiba bit his lip, having a quick mental debate before deciding it couldn’t hurt to speak up. “If you want, I can introduce you to Mai. She can probably find you a place of your own in here.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “You as well, Yuugi.”  
  
Immediately, Yuugi waved the offer away. “Not a problem. I’m happy where I am.”  
  
Ryou, on the other hand, nodded. “Please.”  
  
“Jounouchi-kun was telling me that... well... that you and Atemu didn’t exactly hit it off.”  
  
Ryou snorted inelegantly. “You could say that. He... propositioned me.”   
  
Kaiba couldn’t help shaking his head, snickering to himself quietly. At the questioning look Yuugi sent him, he explained, “I’ve met Atemu. I have no doubts on that one.”  
  
“It was all but an engraved invitation to the party in his pants. No, thanks. For one, I don’t – I mean, that’s not my scene. Not to mention, well, I think if too many more people tapped that, we’d eventually hit oil or something.”  
  
Yuugi shuddered, even as a grin grew on his face. “Now that’s a disgusting mental image.” He flopped down hard on a sofa that was a near match for the one Bakura had. “So what do we know about why we’re here?”  
  
Ryou hesitantly settled himself in one of the chairs, and Kaiba made himself comfortable leaning against the wall. It wasn’t out of a desire to not be a part of this conversation, as one might have immediately thought, but instead it was just that nervousness flaring up again. He didn’t really quite know what to do with himself.  
  
Finally, Ryou spoke up. “I don’t really know all that much. Atemu just sort of dragged me here and said I was going to help out. I didn’t get all the details before... yeah... Then there was no one around to ask.”  
  
Yuugi raised both his eyebrows, though Kaiba couldn’t tell if it was in concern or something else. Personally, the story between what Ryou was saying was concerning to him. He didn’t think Atemu was the kind of man... god... to take someone against their will, but suddenly his comment about Bakura kidnapping humans took on a whole new meaning.   
  
“Jounouchi-kun has told me a little. Apparently, there’s a war of some sort going on. They think we can help out with it.”  
  
“What kind of a war?” came from Ryou. “And what are they?”  
  
“They’re gods, I know that much,” Yuugi volunteered. “Jounouchi-kun is Dian Cécht, a healing god. I haven’t had a chance to meet anyone else yet. I’m not sure why not.”  
  
“There’s a war council going on.” He almost looked around to see who had spoken, only stopping himself when he realized that the voice he had heard this time was his own. “They’re working on what to do next, I think.”  
  
“Kaiba-kun?” Yuugi’s voice sounded confused, but unless he was gravely mistaken, there was nothing but concern on the other’s face. “It sounds like you know a lot more about what’s going on that we do.”  
  
“When did you get here?” Ryou prompted.  
  
It was only through years of self-training that he didn’t fidget to find himself being stared at by the both of them like they were considering something. Years with Gouzaburou and then the orphanage and finally the hospital had broken him of that habit for the most part, even if sometimes it was more of a challenge than others. “Late last night. I’ve just been asking around where I can. Bakura’s being telling me some stuff when he’s free, and Mai’s been filling in the gaps.”  
  
“So we each have our own god,” Yuugi stated with no small degree of amusement. “This sounds like something out of a bad movie.”  
  
Mokuba would have said a bad romance novel, but he wasn’t quite up to sharing that much with this group, not quite yet anyway.   
  
“Well, you two might have your own gods, but I want a refund on the one I ended up with,” grumped Ryou. “I didn’t sign up for any of this. What are we even supposed to be doing?”  
  
“Listening.” Realizing quickly that the single word answer might have come off as snappish, he added for clarification, “The theory is that we should be able to hear the daeva, what the gods are fighting against.”  
  
“So why are they fighting?” It was back to Yuugi, he noted, as the smaller man sat up to look at him more clearly.   
He shook his head. Despite how nervous he was currently feeling, he couldn’t do like Ryou was and fix his attention on the floor, not right now. Instead, he focused on a painting – or was that a mosaic? – behind Yuugi’s head, hung on the wall behind the sofa. “The daeva showed up and started killing them. It really looks like the daeva just want everyone dead, gods and humans.”  
  
“That’s not good.” If he looked out of the corner of his eye, he could see Yuugi chewing on his lower lip, worrying on it again. Sooner or later, he was going to hurt himself doing that. “No one knows why?”  
  
He shook his head again. “It sounds like they’re more trying to stay alive than find out the daevas’ motives.”  
  
If the look on Yuugi’s face as any kind of tell, then he was going to be trying to find out a motive at the very first opportunity he could.  
  
“So,” Ryou spoke up, “who all is here? What gods are we dealing with then?”  
  
Okay, clearly, somehow he had become the guy with the info. He couldn’t say he liked it too much. “I don’t know everyone yet,” he hedged, and Ryou only nodded encouragingly, so he sighed and continued, “but I do know a few. I know Atemu’s real name is Perun. I know Malik’s name is Ninurta, and Amane’s is Hela. I know Honda is Ahura Mazda, and that Jounouchi is Dian Cécht. And I know that Mai and Bakura are Persephone and Hades. They mentioned a couple of other people, but I don’t know anything about them yet.”  
  
The ‘yet’ was a given. He might not have had his brother’s innate sense of curiosity, but all of this interested him. He was going to find out more, one way or another.  
  
Yuugi’s already wide eyes enlarged even further. His voice sounded relatively calm when he spoke though. “I recognize some of those names.”  
  
He wanted to comment that _he_ had recognized some of those names – and he had known next to nothing about mythology before he came here. Instead, though, he kept his mouth shut. There was no sense in antagonizing the conversation.   
  
“Well, Kaiba,” Ryou cut through his thoughts dryly, “it seems you know more about what’s going on than either of us. Care to share?”


	12. Chapter 12

It couldn’t have been more than an hour later when there was a knock on the door. It felt like it had been a lot longer: maybe a year or so. He was so very uncomfortable with talking in front of people, especially with explaining something that he wasn’t a hundred percent certain he knew all the facts on.   
  
Yuugi had a way of asking questions he wouldn’t have thought of, about things that never would have occurred to him, and that was disconcerting to say the very least. But then, he had never credited himself with an overabundance of imagination, so maybe it was just as well that they now had someone like Yuugi around too.  
  
Ryou, on the other hand, seemed to be having some difficulty in believing all of this. He couldn’t say he blamed the other man. If he had not seen so many very obvious examples of what these gods were and what they could do, he probably wouldn’t have believed it himself. He wasn’t so good at taking anything on faith, a trait Ryou in turn seemed to share.  
  
But, speaking of Ryou, the tapping at the door had him sitting up straight as a post and looking a combination of angry and terrified. It wasn’t all that long ago, after all, that he had confessed that Atemu scared him a bit. He could appreciate that, but it wasn’t like he was going to admit that Atemu intimidated the hell out of him.  
  
“I’ll get it,” Yuugi volunteered, already bouncing to his feet before Ryou even got a chance to answer. Seriously, he didn’t know where the other man got all this energy, but it couldn’t be natural. No one was that bouncy and active naturally. (Now, he had seen one of the patients back at the hospital accidentally get an extra dose of the quote-unquote ‘happy pills’ and act like that, but that was chemical and, again, not natural.)  
  
Ryou did actually look terrified, and part of him wanted to comfort him like he would Mokuba, but somehow he didn’t think Ryou would react very well to that. He would probably fare better than if Yuugi tried it, but still it wasn’t something that should be done lightly.  
  
As if sensing where his thoughts were going, Ryou offered him a tight smile that had nothing at all to do with joy. Instead, it was just for shared pain and worry.  
  
“Hello...” Yuugi’s voice echoed as he stretched the word out long. He didn’t sound annoyed or even concerned. Instead, Kaiba could pick up nothing but confusion – and perhaps something a little warmer – in his voice.  
  
He leaned away from the wall a bit to try to glance around the door to see who was there – and relaxed instantly. “Hello, Mai,” he greeted the blond woman. Hell, his voice was even warm for it being him.   
  
“....nurse,” Yuugi finished more quietly. Because apparently it was a little hard to do the whole ‘hello nurse’ at a pretty woman thing when someone else was greeting her by name.   
  
It didn’t stop him from turning around and mouthing to Ryou and Kaiba something along the lines of had they seen those, completely with appropriate hand gestures centering around his own chest area.  
  
Kaiba didn’t even bother holding back from rolling his eyes – nor from speaking at a regular volume. “Yes, I’ve seen them. It’s hard to miss them.” Especially when Yuugi was around the same height as Mokuba and was practically eye-to-eye – or rather, eye to something – with them.  
  
Yuugi seemed to visibly deflate, at least until Mai laughed and ruffled a hand through that unusual hair he had in common with Atemu. “It’s all right, boyo. You can stare at them all you like. Most people talk to them too.”  
  
No matter how many times he heard Mai say that, he didn’t think he was ever going to believe it. Okay, scratch that: he could believe that people talked to her chest all the time. He definitely had no trouble believing that. The part he was having difficulties with was where she apparently had not problem with it. Maybe if it happened enough over the years – the _millennia_ , he corrected himself – then it would cease to matter, but it still boggled his mind.  
  
Although Yuugi’s chirped “All right” boggled his mind even further.   
  
That only seemed to make Mai laugh harder, and so with a smile on her face and quiet laughter still escaping, she turned past Yuugi to look further into the room. She seemed to take a brief second to classify everything in here, which only made him wonder if Atemu never let a soul other than Mana in here, before her eyes lit on him and the other man. “Wow,” she shook her head, even if the smile didn’t even begin to dim, “they weren’t kidding when they said you look a lot like Kura.”  
  
Thankfully he had remembered to cover the lookalike bit during that frightful explanation time, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise. Still, Ryou looked a little... disappointed maybe? He wasn’t too sure if he could follow the complex emotions flitting quickly across the other man’s face.  
  
He settled on a sort of careful neutrality and moved to stand before her. “Hi, I’m Ryou.”  
  
“Mai,” she returned, grasping it.   
  
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mai,” he in turn replied.  
  
At least Ryou didn’t try to go for the whole kissing the hand thing. He wasn’t too sure he could have handled that after the weirdness of the last couple of days. He did hold it lightly for a few seconds longer than was strictly necessary or maybe even appropriate, before he finally let go.   
  
Well... Maybe there was some hope of Ryou getting a new god – or rather goddess – of his very own to replace the one he wanted a refund on. Mai had expressed an interest in having a one-woman man of her very own, so maybe the whole thing might even work out wonderfully. He mentally noted the need to ask Bakura about this as well. After all, he had known Mai the longest.  
  
Yuugi stepped back. He was shaking his head, but it seemed to be with fond exasperation instead of real frustration, like he couldn’t understand how Ryou was getting a better reaction than he had, despite his methods.   
  
“Right, um...” Mai was floundering. Now that part was a bit astounding to him. He hadn’t thought it was possible to put someone as assured as Mai off her poise, but somehow Ryou had deftly managed that. When he glanced back over, she had actually taken a few steps back into the hallway, as if she needed the extra breathing space. “It’s almost time for dinner, so I’m here to guide you back to the main hall.”  
  
“Is it that hard to get around in here?” Yuugi asked him in a sotto voice.   
  
“It’s not easy,” he replied. He wasn’t going to say how completely turned around backwards he had gotten on the way to Yuugi and Jounouchi’s rooms. Of course, Annwn was supposed to be the realm of the Fair Folk as well as the dead; it only made sense that it would difficult for living mortals to navigate it.  
  
“I’ll have to see about mapping it out, then.” And this was a totally different side of Yuugi than he had previously been seeing. Apparently, he was capable of being serious. That was good: he liked the smaller man well enough, but that could have very easily changed if Yuugi started getting on his nerves.   
  
Mai was quickly recovering, responding seriously, “The halls change sometimes, but that might not be a bad idea... Yuugi, right?” He nodded. “It really is uncanny.”  
  
With that said, she took another few steps back and gestured in a way that vaguely said, ‘Right this way.’ He waited until Yuugi and Ryou were out the door before he pushed completely off the wall and followed.   
  
Mai was trailing towards the back, occasionally calling out when a turn was needed and which direction to go, so he settled for keeping pace with her. “How did the war council go?”  
  
She sighed in loud annoyance. “About as well as it could with both Atemu and Kura and Honda and Malik in the same room. Jounouchi got some quality video and has threatened to put it on YouTube if they don’t start taking all this seriously enough not to fight amongst themselves all the time.”  
  
That... could be really interesting. As long as it didn’t break the Internet, he clarified to himself. With gods involved, who knew what the odds of that were?  
  
He glanced ahead of them, but really, there was little hope that the other two weren’t listening in to their entire conversation. He probably would have been, had the situations been reversed. “Mai? If Yuugi and Ryou look like Atemu and Bakura...”  
  
“Yes, you look like one of us, Kaiba,” she answered quietly, “but the daevas killed Set a very, very long time ago, pretty quickly after Osiris went down.” She reached over and patted his arm gently. “I promise, we weren’t keeping it from you, Kaiba. It’s just that none of us really like talking about the ones we have lost.”  
  
“So why now?” he couldn’t help asking. If no one liked talking about it, why answer his question at all now.  
“Because Isis should be back by now, and I thought you should know before she mentions something about it.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “Also, you’ll find that she is the only one of us who didn’t change her name. It’s her way of honoring her dead family, I suppose.” She sighed quietly. “Personally, I’m waiting until this war is over to begin mourning. That way, I know how many people I need to mourn for.”  
  
It made a very cynical sense, and that probably wasn’t good thing, he thought.  
  
She sighed and offered him a wan smile. “Kura was asking about you earlier, about how you were getting along. I said you were doing well.”  
  
If he were as pale as Ryou, then he had no doubt his entire face would have been bright red. As it was, hell, it probably was red. Why it embarrassed him, he wasn’t sure. Maybe that he was happy that Bakura was thinking about him, even in the midst of everything else that was going on.  
  
“Thank you, Mai.” Somehow he managed to keep his voice very even, and right now, that was a huge accomplishment.   
  
“I swear to you: I’ve known Kura for countless centuries now.” It sounded as though she was just musing aloud, but somehow he got the feeling it was a bit more than that. It did seem as though Mai was trying to make sure he and Kura – Bakura – were together and stayed together. “I have never before seen him like he is with you and about you. It’s amazing to see.”  
  
Now she was just trying to see if she could get another flush out of him, he decided. It was probably about time to change the subject. “Is Mokuba still with the hounds?”   
  
As a subject change, it was a rather abrupt one, but aside from an elegantly lifted eyebrow, Mai didn’t comment on it. “Nah, Gwyllgi and Shuck are taking him to the main hall as well. He did seem to be quite the hit with them. He had every last hound acting like a puppy, instead of a big, bag harbinger of death.” She grinned slyly, barely glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “When we get him his own room, I’ll have to make certain it’s near the kennels.”  
  
Coincidentally close but not next door to Bakura’s rooms, he was sure. Well, two could play at that. “We also need to see to it that Ryou gets his own set of rooms. Maybe there are some over near yours and Mana’s.”  
  
Score one point for Kaiba: that at least achieved the purpose of getting the subject back off of him and Bakura. Gods of the Ancient World and the only things standing between humanity and a painful death they might have been, but apparently, some of them were some of the biggest gossips on the planet.  
  
Two more turns and several more long hallways, now walking in near silence, and they were back in the main hall. The same long tables and benches were still set up, though he could easily see where some of them had been disturbed since lunch. Apparently, the war council got a bit animated earlier. Of the gods he could immediately see – Bakura, Malik, Atemu, Amane, and a tall woman with straight black hair, probably Isis – no one seemed any the worse for wear, so maybe it was all okay for now.   
  
In front of him, he could see Yuugi straining, trying to spot someone, probably Jounouchi, he decided. For all of his checking out Mai’s chest, he was obviously quite stuck on the god that had brought him here. That was a sentiment he could get behind: he was finding himself to be in a similar state of mind regarding Bakura.  
  
Speaking of whom... The white-haired god seemed to be in deep conversation with both Amane and the woman he had not previously met. Mokuba was sitting at the table next to Bakura, working on something he couldn’t quite see from here. Ordinarily, he would have headed over, but with the addition of this new person, Isis, he found himself reluctant to do so. If she was mourning and he really did look like one of the people she was mourning, then she might start crying, and he was no good around crying women. No, scratch that: he was no good around crying anyone. It turned him into a big pile of useless.  
  
He could deal with a crying Mokuba. A crying Mokuba, now that he could handle. A liberal application of sweets usually did wonders on that front. He wasn’t delusional enough to think that would hold true for anyone else, however. He wasn’t that brand of crazy.  
  
Thankfully, though, Bakura seemed to spot him over Amane’s shoulder and offered him both a grin and a beckoning wave, neither of which he felt too inclined to deny. Without another word, he walked over that way, pausing only long enough to see that Mokuba was working on a picture of what seemed to be a few dozen dogs. Most of them were pitch black and were only differentiated by their size or eye color, but a few were only done in outlines and so seemed to be white.  
  
And now he was something he had never thought he would ever think, but was his baby brother really the age he thought he was? Mokuba was supposed to be four years younger than he was. He certainly didn’t act like he was getting ready to leave his teens. In fact, he acted more like he was about to enter them. Add to that the fact that everyone here kept calling Mokuba a kid, and he had to wonder if maybe he was missing something. It wouldn’t be that hard, not with him seeing Mokuba every day; he could easily miss any growth spurts by seeing them all the time.  
  
But hadn’t he noted just a few moments ago that Mokuba and Yuugi were of a similar height? What that meant, he didn’t know. He wasn’t going to put too much thought into it right now.  
  
“Have a good time downstairs, Mokuba?” he asked quietly, taking a seat next to his little brother, not even bothering to swing his legs over the side of the bench.  
  
The look Mokuba turned on him was pure skeptical disbelief for a long moment before it was replaced with a more familiar grin. “Niisama, it was awesome! You need to come with me next time. It’s all kinds of awesome!”  
“Did you break Gwyllgi’s heart, or is he still your favorite?”   
  
In response, Mokuba rolled his eyes. “Of course. Gwyllgi’s awesome. The others are cool, and Shuck is awesome, but Gwyllgi’s the most awesome.”  
  
“Shuck?” This wasn’t the first time he had heard that name recently, and he did remember a little bit about the Black Shuck from what he had read this morning. That didn’t mean everything was rushing right back to him; it had been a very busy day.  
  
Before Mokuba could answer, something from beneath the table shoved him _hard_. For a moment, he flailed, almost losing his balance and tumbling to the floor. Somehow, however, he caught himself before he slid all the way off, and he turned to glare at whomever was behind him.  
  
No, scratch that. Not _whom_ ever was behind him, but instead _what_ ever was behind him.   
  
He would have thought he was looking at Gwyllgi for a brief second, until the dog moved into the limited light that streamed throughout the main hall but barely pierced the gloom beneath the tables.   
  
Yes, the dog was as big as, if not larger than, Gwyllgi, but that was where the similarities stopped. This one was as black as pitch and shaggy as hell; if he had to compare it to any dog he had ever seen, he would have called it a gigantically massive Irish wolfhound, a larger version of an already large dog. The most disturbing part was the glowing red eyes. That part made him involuntarily want to shiver, as tiny bits of what he had read this morning flashed through his mind: death omens, spectral hounds, the Wild Hunt.  
  
“This is Black Shuck,” Mokuba cheerily stated, reaching under the table to pet the massive creature as if it was nothing more than an oversize dog.  
  
He had to admit that, for a second, his heart felt like it stopped in his chest. Gwyllgi was one thing; Bakura had introduced both him and Mokuba to the gigantic dog. This Black Shuck was a bit of an unknown quality, and Kaiba couldn’t say that he cared much for that. He didn’t think Gwyllgi would let anything dangerous anywhere near Mokuba, but...  
  
“I see you’ve met Shuck.” Once again, he nearly started out of his seat. This time, at least, Mai was the one who had caused it. Mutely, he nodded, never taking his eyes off the dog, even as the blond woman sank down to sit beside him on the bench and leaned over behind him to pet the massive thing as well. “I thought, if you’re going to be listening in on the daeva, you might need a bodyguard. Shuck is the best at that there is.”  
  
So... this thing was going to be with _him_ all the time? Great, just great. Still, it could have been worse. Someone could have decided they had a sense of humor and have Atemu follow him around. With Bakura... Yeah, he could see that going so well.  
  
“I hope you don’t mind,” Mai continued. A smirk spread over her face quickly, and his stomach dropped just as swiftly. “I would hate for Kura’s first steady romance to disappear, after all. I’m just looking out for you guys.”  
  
“Mai?” he deadpanned. “You’re evil.” She laughed at that.  
  
“I could have told you that years ago,” Bakura commented, stepping in front of him. He glanced up to see the dark-haired woman – Isis, he supposed – staring at him, even as Amane was trying valiantly to keep her attention on their conversation. “What’s she done now?”  
  
Mai climbed to her feet gracefully, offering Bakura an easy smile. “I’m just looking out for Kaiba, that’s all, Kura.” She shrugged an elegant shoulder. “I asked Shuck to keep an eye on him for me.”  
  
Bakura raised an eyebrow at that, and he actually looked a bit impressed. “I’m trying to decide if that’s overkill or not.” He paused, humming quietly, even as he sank down to sit in the spot Mai had just vacated. “It’s sort of like going to a knife fight and bringing an H-bomb.”  
  
“I believe in if you’re going to do something, do it well and thoroughly – and leave no witnesses that you did it begin with.” With a wink and a jaunty wave, Mai stepped away, saying, “I’m going to go see if I can’t find where Jounouchi has disappeared to. You kids behave.”  
  
Bakura waited until Mai was a few steps away before leaning closer to talk as privately as possible in a room that was rapidly filling with people – well, humans and gods. “It sounds like she’s been in rare form all day today.”  
  
“I would hate to see her in any other form,” he muttered under his breath. “Apparently, I’m fun for her to pick on.”  
  
“I could have told you that too.”  
  
On his other side, Mokuba elbowed him sharply. “Get a room, you two. I don’t want to see that.”   
  
He might have almost been convincing if he hadn’t been grinning so broadly.


	13. Chapter 13

There were nearly twice as many gods in the main hall as he had met previously. He was doing a lousy job of keeping up with all of their names as well.  
  
There was Isis. He could remember her fairly easily, though to be honest, a first meeting like that would be hard to forget. She had patted his hair, and cupped his face between both of her hands, and said something in a language that he had never heard before. Bakura had eased her hands back off of him and whispered to her, "He's not Set. I'm sorry, Isis, but he's not your brother." And then there had been the crying, soft and strained and nearly twice as bad as if she had started letting out banshee wails.  
  
He had sat there useless, and Malik had eventually appeared and led her away. Bakura had explained offhandedly that they were from vaguely similar areas of the world, Egypt and Sumeria, and so had adopted each other like Bakura and Amane had done. Isis was still with Malik and presumably Amane, but that still didn't change the fact that he had frozen up like a statue at the sight of the first tear. He really didn't do well with people crying.  
  
Varon was the next god he got to meet, and he didn't think he was going to forget that man any time soon as well. There was something about the way those dark chocolate eyes watched him that made him feel like the second course of someone's favorite meal. Bakura had been as still as a board next to him, watching every move Varon made with more caution than he had seen the man use combined to date. Bakura had called him 'Coyote,' and Kaiba had to admit that he was intrigued by that. Not enough to ask, not when that person made Bakura of all people nervous, but maybe there was something in one of the books about Coyote.  
  
Then there was Honda. And he was indeed the same Honda who had lived in the room next to his for a short time months ago. It was weird: the last time he had seen Honda, the man was swinging from a makeshift rope improvised out of bed sheets, and now here he was fighting with Malik over how best to proceed on the next step of their plan.  
  
Finally, there were the ones that he had not even been able to keep up with their names as they were introduced. The names came up from time to time in conversation – Vivien, Siegfried, Raphael, Rebecca, Ryuuzaki, and a few others – but he wasn't completely sure he could put a name to a face. He definitely couldn't pick out which human name went with which god name.  
  
At least, it wasn't just the core group that he had seen earlier. He could confess that he had been worried about that. He hadn't been able to parse out how in the world the limited group of gods he had known previously was going to save the world. It just hadn't seemed possible.  
  
The number of gods here had nearly doubled, with some talk circulating about others showing up, and he was starting to get a better feeling about their chances of success now. It still wasn't exactly what he would have considered to be a huge number, but he was a bit more optimistic. It felt like they – and therefore, the world – might have a better chance of survival this way.  
  
"—We should be trying to ferret out their plans sooner rather than later," Honda was arguing, solely with Malik now, as everyone else seemed to have turned to calmer discussions excepting those two. Of course, their volume more than made up for everyone else's lack of participation. "I mean, they were seen—"  
  
"—entirely too close to Glastonbury Tor, yes, I know," Malik growled back. "I was the one who reported that. I was the one who actually found out about it in the first place. You don't have to tell me about it, you know."  
  
"Then we should know what it is they're planning before they start actually doing it. We have resources now."  
  
Malik glanced over at him, past Amane and Bakura. Why?  
  
Oh, wait, no, no way. Had Honda just called him 'resources'? That wasn't cool at all.  
  
"Our 'resources' are not exactly unlimited." And he had to be amazed at the venom dripping off every syllable out of Malik's mouth. It was almost a thing of beauty. "And I'm not exactly hot on the idea of throwing any of our three listeners to the wolves, so to say. Or have you forgotten what it's like to take care of the humans?"  
  
"Unlike you," Honda fired right back, "I still have worshipers. I'm not buried under the sand in some modern war-torn country, where the world has all but forgotten your original country even existed."  
  
Malik let out a growl that actually made the hair on his arms and on the back of his neck stand straight on end. He was already pushing himself to his feet, presumably to go around the table and try his damnedest to kick Honda's ass, when Amane grabbed him, a hand around either arm, doing her best to hold him in place. To his surprise, he could actually see the effort it was talking her to keep him in one spot.  
  
Honestly, he couldn't say he blamed Malik for losing his temper at that. Just from what he had picked up here and there in his time in this place, it seemed like that would be a 'below the belt' shot.  
  
The dark looks Honda was receiving from a combination of Amane and Bakura only cemented that idea in his mind. It really looked like they were about to be short a couple of allies before the night was over, no matter how he looked at it. Either Amane was going to let go and Malik was going to kill Honda, or Malik's head was going to explode from the intensity of the glares Honda was sending his way. Either way, it looked like someone was going to die soon.  
  
At least until there was the loud crack of a hand hitting the wooden table hard. He glanced down the opposite direction, away from the two arguing gods, to see Atemu pushing himself to his feet. Most people's attention seemed to be split between the All Father at the end of the table and the fight in the middle of the table – probably for the very good reason that either one, Atemu or the fight, could prove fatal in an instant if the mood struck. Personally, he felt a bit confused, seeing as how it felt suddenly like he was seeing Atemu in an all-new light.  
  
"That's enough," Atemu commanded. It actually felt like some of the tension bled out of the room at those two words, as if he had commanded it and it was so. "We can't afford this right now, not with the daevas so close to our location. Frankly, you both should know better. Honda, that was out of line. We all made a pact when we joined forces never to bring up each other's past or remaining followers." The taller man nodded and sank back down into his seat. "Malik?" The blond turned his attention to the smaller god; he alone didn't look any calmer at anything Atemu had said so far. "We can't afford blood shed among us right now, and we don't need our loyalties within this room to be more divided than they already are. So please, restrain yourself from murdering him."  
  
"I'll try," Malik groused, finally letting Amane pull him down to sit beside her once again, "but I'll make no promises for the next time."  
  
Atemu nodded solemnly, as if he had expected nothing less, even if he did not sit back down himself. Instead, he turned his attention to the white-haired god at Kaiba's side. "Bakura, you said Glastonbury Tor is the door to Annwn, right?"  
  
Bakura nodded, resting his elbows on the table and looking a good deal more serious than Kaiba had ever seen him so far. "It's one of them, yes, though I have to say, it's the most obvious of them all."  
  
"If they managed to gain entrance through Glastonbury Tor, where would that put us?"  
  
Bakura snorted, though the sound was in no way one of humor. "As Malik would say, screwed blue. Annwn is pretty well fortified as the former home of the Tylwyth Teg, but it's mostly enchantments. We've never gotten a good answer on how well the old fairy enchantments work on the daevas. If they work, then the daevas could be wandering the fairy paths for years. If they don't, then they could appear almost anywhere in Annwn."  
  
"So we do need to know what their plans are for us soon?"  
  
"Sadly, better sooner than later," Bakura agreed. He definitely sounded like he didn't much care for the idea. Of course, finding out the daevas' plan pretty much meant sending him, Yuugi, or Ryou back out into the human world, hope that they could overhear the plans, and hope again that they could get away unscathed to report back what they had heard. There was a lot of hope and not a lot of reassurance to this plan; there were a lot of places where it could go very, very bad, and one of the three of them could end up very, very dead.  
  
And then there was always the assumption that the daevas would be speaking – or think-speaking rather, he supposed – in a language one of them could understand and relate back.  
  
"How soon could one of the listeners be in the human world and working on their plan?"  
  
"In ten minutes, give or take. They would need to go up a route where no one could see them emerge."  
  
Bakura... didn't look too good. In fact, he looked as though he was sitting all alone in the crowd of people. He had leaned forward enough that he was almost touching the table, elbows still resting on it. Leaning that far forward, no part of him was touching Amane on the one side of him or Kaiba on the other. In fact, it was very much like he was withdrawing from the people around him. He didn't want to go through with this plan, Kaiba realized. That was why Bakura was acting like this. The whole thing had too few guarantees, and there was too good of a chance Bakura could be sending a human to his death on the off chance the plan might work.  
  
Amane shot him a glance over Bakura's back before leaning closer to twine an arm around one of Bakura's. Hesitantly, he followed suite, though he instead wrapped his arm around Bakura's waist. Support and family. It suddenly occurred to him that that was what this was. In less than a week, Bakura had become family. By virtue of that, he had also picked up Amane and Malik, and so they were all supporting each other in their own ways. It felt both wonderful and odd: for so long, he had only had Mokuba to depend on as family. He couldn't complain, though; in fact, he could oddly get used to it.  
  
"So who's going to go?" Atemu prompted in the silence that had followed Bakura's words. Blood red eyes glanced at all three listeners in turn. Kaiba could have been mistaken, but he could have sworn that they had lingered on Ryou the longest. Maybe Atemu was still holding a bit of a grudge over Ryou turning him down.  
  
That wouldn't be good. Ryou had some skills from what he had observed, but he didn't think the other man could blend in well enough to fool anyone looking at him. In fact, he didn't think that Ryou could fool anyone into thinking he was actually casually, just from the stammering and nervousness he had seen when he and Yuugi had gone to meet the man.  
  
And speaking of Yuugi, the smaller man might have been better at appearing less nervous than Ryou, but Kaiba had his doubts about his social skills. The way he had introduced himself to Mai and his instant trust of Kaiba alone called more things than he would think to attest to into question. And there had been that whole thing where Jounouchi was worried that Yuugi probably wouldn't come out of their shared rooms until he knew other humans were around - and they wanted him to go chase down daevas?  
  
Damn. Damn, damn, damn. That didn't look good. It only left one option really.  
  
"I'll do it," he stated. Okay, maybe it might have come out closer to a question than a statement, and maybe he was barely talking loud enough for Mokuba, Bakura, and he himself to hear the words. Still, though...  
  
Bakura whipped around to face him so quickly that he was surprised the white-haired god didn't get whiplash. Hell, he was surprised he didn't get whiplash just from seeing Bakura do that. "What? No way."  
  
"I'm the best choice," he continued softly. "I know more going into this than Yuugi or Ryou, and I'll... have Black Shuck with me." Although he suddenly found himself disliking the whole idea a lot less now than he had only a few moments ago. Having a monstrous creature like that going into a very unknown situation could only be a good thing, he figured. He didn't want to say the rest of what he had been thinking: that he was the only one of them that was actually even somewhat qualified to be doing this, that Ryou or Yuugi might choke under this. Hell, he might choke under this, but it was the best option.  
  
"All right then, it's settled," Atemu stated. "Kaiba will be heading out and seeing what he can find shortly."  
  
Atemu at least seemed to be oblivious of the dark look Bakura was turning his direction. He looked like – Actually, no, Kaiba couldn't think of anything Bakura looked like at all, other than ridiculously pissed off. With the look the shorter god was getting, he would actually really hate to be in his shoes, because honestly, if Bakura glared much harder, Atemu might have melted.  
  
"I'll be going with him." While it was no surprise to hear the white-haired god say those words, it was a huge relief to hear them. He had only been in Annwn about a day, and he was already thinking of going up to the human world as 'leaving home'. He liked Annwn. It was a thousand impossible things all piled in an even more impossible pile, but it was Bakura's home, so he would like to think of it as his own as well. "There is no way he's going alone."  
  
"I hate to say it," Isis finally spoke up, "but the daeva do seem to be attracted to the presence of us gods, and once they find us, they seem to want to do nothing more than kill us. Having a god with the listener could spoil our chances to find out their long-term plans by making them focus on the short-term ones instead." She sighed, offering both Kaiba and Bakura a wan smile. "I hate to say it, but it's a very bad idea, Hades."  
  
"Bakura," the man at his side corrected with a sound that was part sigh and part growl. The look he had turned on Isis seemed to shout about betrayal; apparently, he had been counting on her siding with him on any part of this whole thing. And he so very obviously did not like this part of the plan. For that matter, he didn't seem to care too much for the plan in general. It had to be done, though. There was just no way around it. It was time for him to earn his keep.  
  
"I'll be fine, Bakura," Kaiba returned quietly, trying to pitch his voice to just the two of them. "Like I said, I'll have Black Shuck with me. You did say that having him around was like bringing an H-bomb to a knife fight. He'll keep me safe." A low whine seemed to echo from under the table near his feet. Apparently, the dog agreed with him. That was good. Maybe between the two of them, they could convince Bakura.  
  
"I'm sorry, Bakura." Wait a minute... Atemu? That was Atemu saying that. "I'm sure all of us dislike the idea as much as you do–"  
  
"Somehow I doubt that," he heard Mai commented in a stage whisper, one obviously intended to be heard by the entire group.  
  
"–but it has to be done. One of them has to go out there, and Kaiba has volunteered. We can't play favorites with the humans, now can we?" Bakura didn't answer, though. Instead his eyes were narrowed, and he was glaring at Atemu for all he was worth. At least, that was what Kaiba could tell out of the corner of his eye. He wasn't willing to try meeting Bakura's eyes right now, not when he had just pissed Bakura off so badly; instead, he kept his eyes focused on the table right in front of the white-haired man and his arm around the back of his waist. "All right then. Good luck, Kaiba. Let us know what you find out when you get back."  
  
If he got back, he thought dourly to himself, but he didn't vocalize the words. He didn't want to risk provoking this whole group all over again. It was like those words were the signal to close down the conversation.  
  
Almost as one, many of the gods and goddess around them pushed themselves to their feet and filed away. He even felt one or two of them pat him on the shoulder in passing, but he wasn't paying any attention to them. Instead, his vision was still locked on the table, while all his real focus was on the man – the god – sitting next to him.  
  
Soon enough, the only gods still in the room were Bakura, Amane, Malik, and Mai. Ryou was still sitting patiently next to Mai, concern buried in those chocolate brown eyes as he stared at Kaiba. Amane and Malik seemed to be wearing identical expressions of shock, varying only by the degrees to which they displayed it. Bakura was completely closed off, and Mokuba was staring at him in disguised terror. And Mai...  
  
"You know," Mai's voice cut in his thoughts, "I can't decide if you're heroically stupid or stupidly heroic. I'm leaning towards just plain stupid. I can't believe you, Kaiba. Why the hell would you volunteer for something like this?"  
  
He shrugged, no longer even trying to hide how terrified of this he was. "It has to be done. No offense, Ryou, but I can't see you or Yuugi doing this."  
  
Ryou nodded. "None taken. Yuugi seems a little flighty for this. I've been in institutions most of my life, so I lack anything resembling the ability to socialize with normal people."  
  
He smirked weakly. "I've been in the same boat myself. Normally, so do I."  
  
"Yeah, but you're a lot better at faking it than I am. I shouldn't be so happy you're willing to do this, Kaiba, but I know I'm not able to. So, thank you, Kaiba, for doing what I know I can't." He nodded his thanks – before Ryou surprised him by continuing, "So what can I do to help?"  
  
"I—"  
  
"More than that" came from Amane. "What can we all do to help?"  
  
Like he had been thinking, family. Just because they weren't Kaibas, at least not by name or blood or any of the things he used to think counted, it didn't mean that they weren't all family and weren't all going to help. He wasn't too used to anyone taking care of him, because usually it was him taking care of Mokuba, but... it felt nice.  
  
"Figure out a way I can get up there too without anyone noticing," Bakura stated plainly.  
  
Mai shook her head, the movement slow and sad. "After you called Atemu out on it, he'll be watching to see what you do now. There's no way you can go up top without him seeing. Someone else will have to go up with Kaiba."  
  
There was silence that stretched for all of half a minute before another voice spoke up, "I'll do it." Frankly, he had to stare at shock at Malik for that. Of all the people here, if Bakura couldn't come, he would have expected Amane or Mai first. He thought Malik didn't really like him all that much, after all. "I've been needing an excuse to up there and kick some ass. This'll do just fine."  
  
"Will that work, Kura?" Mai asked softly.  
  
There was a long stretch of silence before Bakura finally nodded. "It'll have to be. I don't think I'm going to get a better offer."  
  
Malik laughed at that, grinning easily. "Nope, probably not. Not unless you've been hiding some straight-up voodoo shit from the rest of us."  
  
"Not lately," Bakura returned, and he sounded marginally better. He was going to count that as a plus.  
  
"What about you, Kaiba?" Startled, he looked over at Mai to see him her awaiting his answer expectantly. "Is that all right by you as well?" He nodded mutely. It was better, actually, than he had been hoping for. He had been expecting to go back to the human world with nothing but Black Shuck as backup. Having someone like Malik around would be quite the unexpected bonus. "Good. Then we should probably get moving on this before Atemu gets too suspicious."  
  
"Let him get suspicious," Bakura stated blandly, pushing himself to his feet. Kaiba's and Amane's arms fell off of him, but he moved quickly to grab Kaiba's hand before it dropped too far. "Mokuba, I need to borrow your brother before he goes off and does something stupid, okay?"  
  
Mokuba nodded solemnly, way too serious for a child – or presumably, a changeling – of his age to be. "All right. Just bring him back in one piece, all right?"  
  
Bakura nodded absently. "Of course."  
  
"And, umm, " the boy floundered, "I'll be at Mai's, okay? Good luck, niisama."  
  
Kaiba found himself having to scramble to get off the bench seat and onto his feet before he was dragged out of the main hall and back towards their rooms. The journey didn't seem to take nearly as long this time as it had at lunch; in fact, Bakura had barely led him out the door and turned a corner before they were there. What Mai had said about the halls rearranging themselves rang oddly through his mind before all thought ran out of his head at the smoldering look on Bakura's face.  
  
Before the white-haired god even had a chance to speak, he made himself speak up instead, "So, on a scale of one to ten, how pissed off at me are you?"  
  
"Fifteen" came immediately. "It's reckless, and... And I find that I'm not as prepared to risk you as I thought I might have been."  
  
Completely the opposite of the harsh tone in his voice, he spoke very quietly. His voice was only barely loud enough to be heard over the sound of the door clicking closed behind the white-haired god, Black Shuck carefully left just outside the door. Somehow he got the feeling the dog was out there willingly, not wanting to be in here for whatever was about to happen.  
  
"It has to be done," he whispered. "That's why you brought me here, Bakura: to find out what I could about the daevas' plans.  
  
"That's not the only reason you're here."  
  
He looked up, and Bakura was directly in front of him without ever really making a single sound. Gentle hands cupped his cheeks and levered his face up so that his eyes met Bakura's. In those pale eyes, he could easily read how worried the other man was, how concerned he was about Kaiba going out and doing this, before his eyes slipped shut, and warm lips pressed cautiously against his own.


	14. Chapter 14

Alone with Malik... It was definitely in his Top Three list of places he would not like to be. Malik’s temper (and to be honest, sanity) hadn’t made a good first impression on him, and he was not keen on another meeting with either any time soon.  
  
Of course, Malik seemed to be the least of his concerns – as well as determined not to get too near him either. If what Isis had been saying about the daevas focusing on the gods to the exclusion of everything else was indeed true, then it was probably best that he didn’t get too close, not if they wanted to actually achieve the purpose of this little mission.  
  
At least he had Black Shuck with him to keep him both company and safe. The huge shaggy beast wasn’t nearly as friendly as Gwyllgi, so maybe it was just as well that Gwyllgi was back in Annwn with Mokuba while Shuck was here with him. The temperaments fit, and Mokuba was a whole lot friendlier than he was.  
  
In the pocket of his coat, he heard a phone ringing shrilly. Bakura had insisted he wear one of the coats against the damp weather of southwestern England, and Amane had presented him with a small cellular phone. “There’s no sense in you having to keep an ear out for what Malik is thinking,” she had explained. “This should solve that problem: keep you two in contact, while still allowing you to keep an ear out for the daeva.”   
  
He didn’t think he was ever going to get used to these gods and their almost casual relationship with the modern world, the ones of them that actually associated with it anyway.  
  
“Hello,” he answered as soon as he got the thing on and to his ear. There wasn’t really any doubt of who it could be; only a few people actually had this number, according to Amane, only one or two of which were likely to be calling right now.  
  
“I spotted a few daevas a couple of blocks from where you are,” Malik stated without preamble, instead cutting directly to the point. “It’s a small café near the tourist office. There are three of them that I can see so far.”  
  
The phone disconnected with a very definitive click, leaving him with silence until he flipped it closed and slipped it back in his pocket.  
  
This was it. This was what he had been brought here to do. Suddenly, it all seemed a lot more immediate than it had even half an hour ago when he had first come back to here from Annwn -- and a lot more terrifying. After all, these were creatures that seemed to terrify the gods; they were certainly doing a good job of killing them; and he had the audacity to think he was going to try to spy on them?  
  
The café near the tourist office... It could have stood to be a bit more descriptive, but then it was Malik, so what exactly was he hoping for? Especially considering the man – god – wasn’t even supposed to be here with him? He wasn’t even too sure how far away from him Malik was, just that he was close enough to be his backup if it came to that. Bakura wouldn’t have let him leave if he wasn’t going to be reasonably safe.   
  
Anyway, he had a fairly good idea of where he needed to be focusing, which are and which building, so now it was just a matter of figuring out how to listen in -- and if it was even going to be possible. He really had no idea what he was doing, but... but...   
  
But this wasn’t about him. This wasn’t about him at all. This was about Bakura and the other gods and the world and...  
  
What he was hearing wasn’t any language he knew, that much was for certain. It didn’t sound like any language he had ever heard of, for that matter. The time he had spent with Gouzaburou had given a few to choose from, and this resembled none of them.  
  
A word at the time, the meanings began to become clear. It was no great surprise that they were planning an assault on Annwn, to be launched just as soon as they found the entrance. Glastonbury Tor, the place Bakura had mentioned as a way in, wasn’t in the list of locations they were throwing out as potential paths. He tried to make note of all of the places they mentioned, so that Bakura and the others were aware of where they were looking: Saint Michael’s Mount, Bardsey Island, Hadrian’s Wall, Grassholm, and a few others.  
  
It was almost reassuring. Maybe they were falling off the scent. If the daeva were moving on to new locations for the entrance to Annwn, then maybe they were in the clear. He didn’t want to jump straight to hope, though. Hope was a dangerous thing. If they gave in to it and started to believe they were in the clear, then if the attack did ever come, they would be unprepared.  
  
Plus it wasn’t like he was a naturally optimistic person. If anything, he was everything but optimistic.  
  
Either way, though, it might have been a moot point. The conversation was shifting.   
  
As casually as he could, he flipped the phone back open and dialed Malik’s number back. Suddenly he was glad that Bakura _hadn’t_ come with him after all, if only for his own tenuous grasp on sanity. He wouldn’t have been able to stand hearing what he was hearing now about Malik if it was regarding Bakura instead. And that, he supposed, was probably why Bakura hadn’t wanted him involved.  
  
Two rings... Three rings... Why wasn’t Malik picking up? Had they already gotten to him? Was he too late?  
  
No more than a split second before the other number’s voicemail would have picked up, an annoyed version of Malik’s voice demanded, “What?!”  
  
“They are here. They know you’re here.” It took an effort to keep his breathing steady and his voice level. Yes, it was definitely a good thing it was Malik and not Bakura. Whatever cover they still had was thanks to the fact he had not yet blown it by getting pissed off hearing his lover spoken ill of.  
  
“I know.” Though he had to say, he did not like this too calm tone of voice he was hearing from the god on the other end of the phone. “They’re coming this way. Hang up and go back to Annwn. Get out of here. Let the others know what their plans are.”  
  
There was a click and then silence from the other end of the line. For a split second, he was too shocked for any kind of reaction, then it was only remembering that he was in public that kept him from throwing the phone.  
  
There was no way -- no way in hell -- Malik was going to suicide on his watch. What did he think he was going to: play at being the vanguard that holds off the enemy to let the others escape to safety? Hell, no. He was going to--  
  
What was he going to do? If all the gods in the world were being killed off by these creatures, what did he think he was going to do? And it was all happening so quickly...  
  
The creatures before him barely looked human at all any longer, if they ever really had to begin with. Something in his mind sort of... slid as he tried to think of how to describe what it was he was seeing. All he could say for certain was that they were something that could only be described as both alien and not fully formed, like a lump of strange clay that had not yet been completely given shape. It was at once hideous and disgusting and almost more than his mind could handle – so he let himself look away at last.  
  
Given the circumstances, Malik was slightly more appealing to look at. Every movement fluid and almost unhurried, he held two oddly shaped blades in his hands, calmly standing his ground against at least three of those creatures.  
  
But then this was a god of war, he was gathering, who was completely in his element: fighting. And something told him that Malik would keep fighting until either all the daeva here were dead or he was. And how many other gods of war, completely in their element, had been overrun by the daeva?  
  
And there wasn’t anything he could do to help. All of his abilities seemed to be limited to hearing things normal humans couldn’t. That would be of no help in a fight.   
  
Why weren’t people reacting?! They were walking around, going about their days as if there wasn’t a battle going on around them. They were going out of their way to avoid the area where the fighting was going on, but it all seemed to be subconscious, like they were doing it on reflex, sight unseen. They probably were, he realized with a start. Just like his own mind kept shying away from the daeva and their currently hideous guise, these poor, simple, normal people just couldn’t possibly comprehend what was going on. Their minds were simply having them move on as if nothing was there.  
  
No wonder the daeva had been able to exist this long. You could go mad trying to stare at them too long, so it was just best to ignore them, subconsciously at least.  
  
“Shuck!” Malik’s voice, suddenly dark and commanding, shook him out of his daze. “Get him out of here!” Before he could even open his mouth to object, oddly luminescent purple eyes fixed on him. “Tell Bakura what you found out.” All he could do was nod in agreement, words oddly stolen from him. “And tell Amane–-”  
  
That was all he was able to hear before he felt powerful jaws seize the back of his shirt, and the world disappeared around him. No, not disappeared: _blurred_. They were moving, faster than anyone or anything had any right to move.  
  
This was not right. Black Shuck wasn’t so tall as to be able to manhandle him like this. And there was no way any animal of Shuck’s size could move so quickly.  
  
And they were leaving Malik behind, alone to deal with the daeva. It wasn’t right.  
  
But maybe it was the right thing to do. The others needed to know what they had found out. If both he and Malik died, there would be no one to pass the information along.  
  
No, it definitely wasn’t right, but it was what had to be done.


	15. Chapter 15

Amane looked pale. Well, a whole lot more pale than she usually looked at least. Her lips were set in a firm line, and if he had to hazard a guess, he would say that she wasn’t paying a bit of attention to the conversation going on around them. If anything, she was biding her time.  
  
For what, he wasn’t too certain. Part of him was very sure that she was waiting until all the attention was elsewhere, so she could leave unnoticed. Part of him, however, didn’t want to even try to fathom a guess; that part of him was still reeling a bit under the news that there were gods who walked the world, who were very much like human beings, and who were being killed off.   
  
Amane looked like nothing more than a woman in shock right now, and it was perfectly understandable. There was nothing he wanted less than to break the news about Malik to her and Bakura.  
  
Speaking of Bakura… He was sitting on the other side of Amane, an arm wrapped tightly around the back of her waist, holding her tight against his side. Despite how stiffly she was holding herself upright, he could almost see that she was leaning against Bakura for support.  
  
It was a lot like she was tightly holding onto the hand he had offered her, for reasons he hadn’t been able to fathom at the time. She was taking all the help she could get for now. When this war council was over, though, he didn’t want to know what it was she was going to do. It wouldn’t be pretty, and it probably would not be good for the continued lifespan of the daevas who had attacked Malik.   
  
He hadn’t been present for the first war council. No one had said a word to him about leaving this time, though. He had done his best to relay all the important information he had picked up off the daevas at the café outside the tourist shop, but there hadn’t been a lot of information there. Well, that had been what he had thought. The reality was proving to be something entirely else.  
  
There were a whole lot more gods here this time than there had been only last night. He was doing good to remember even some of the names that had been tossed about. He remembered Vivian and Rebecca and maybe Shadi, but the rest of the new ones of them were utterly and completely unknown quantities to him.   
  
This wasn’t going to be enough gods to fight the daevas. He understood now what Bakura had meant: about how powerful the daeva were, how they had easily destroyed entire pantheons, how they could just as simply wipe out the human race. While he found he didn’t give much of a damn about humans, for the daevas to get to them, it would mean that they had gotten through Bakura and the rest of the gods -- and that he wasn’t ready to deal with. He wasn’t ready to lose Bakura.  
  
A pragmatic part of himself informed him that it was very possible. After all, how many pantheons of gods had there been in the world? How many had been wiped out? How few remained? And how many contingency plans had been made for when they, the final gods, were gone, besides Amane’s brothers and father? They were already prepared to lose. If they lost, it would mean he would lose Bakura… but at least the world would be ending before he could mourn him.  
  
And that was damn fatalistic, even for him. He had never been the most optimistic of people, but this was damn dark for him. Why couldn’t he be more like Yuugi and be stupidly optimistic about their chances?   
  
He _wanted_ to believe that they would all make it out of this alive. He wasn’t exactly going to hold his breath in hopes of it, though. No one here was that hopeful for such a good outcome… except Yuugi.   
  
Well, maybe Yuugi had enough optimism for all of them. He rather doubted it himself, but there was still half a chance of it, that they wouldn’t all die horrible deaths.  
  
As much as he and the war god had not exactly hit it off to begin with, he still hoped that Malik had not died a horrible death. He hoped that it was quick and maybe even clean. As far as he was concerned, that was probably the best that could be hoped for.   
  
One of Bakura’s hands squeezed his arm lightly. He glanced down; it was the arm that was around Amane. A glance up showed that both death gods were watching him carefully. There were a thousand questions in Bakura’s eyes, not the least of which being if he was all right; Amane’s eyes bore the faintest stamp of concern underneath all the miles of sorrow that was much more plainly visible.   
  
He had deliberately not told either of them everything that he had overheard from the daevas. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t particularly want to think about it himself, as horrible as it had been. Even the part of the daevas’ discussion that was the more… tame was still talking about ripping the war god to pieces.  
  
He hoped that was not what they had done to him. Of all the options he had overheard the daeva discussing, that might have been the least painful, though… and that was horrid in and of itself.   
  
“So it’s agreed then.” It should have been a question, Kaiba thought to himself idly, but with Atemu saying it, the phrase was most assuredly a statement… or perhaps ‘pronouncement’ was the best way to phrase that. Either way, it cut the fugue that had been in control of his mind. “We take the fight to them before they find their way to us.”  
  
“You do of course realize that we’re hopelessly and completely outmatched, don’t you?” To some surprise, that bitter summation had come from Mai. It seemed so very out of character for her that he had to do a bit of a double take. “We’re going to die horribly.”   
  
Somehow he was very certain that, if Ryou or Yuugi had turned up for this war council, Yuugi would be making some kind of rousing speech about how they were going to persevere, they were going to come through on top… or some such stuff. As far as he was concerned, it was just as well that the younger man wasn’t here. He wasn’t sure he had it in him right now not to hit Yuugi for commentary just like that.   
  
Jounouchi pushed himself to his feet, drawing the attention at the table to him. “I don’t know about everyone else here, but I would rather die fighting these bastards and be able to look my kin in the eye. It has to be better than staying here and hiding. Come on! We’re supposed to be gods! What are we doing hiding from a fight?”  
  
“Surviving,” Bakura put in both pragmatically and simplistically. “There aren’t enough of us for a war.”  
  
Mai was nodding. “If we march to war right now, we are going to die. What will that accomplish? What purpose will that serve?” She sighed, raking a well-formed hand through nearly perfect blonde hair. “We will all die, and the world will be poorer for it. At least it will be for the few hours it would have left before it’s destroyed.”  
  
It seemed for a long moment that they were about to plunge right back into that same argument that had been making the rounds lately, since he had gotten back as a matter of fact.   
  
Instead Amane sat forward and spoke. She made it look easy to capture the attention of the entire room. “We take the fight to them. It’s like Ragnarök; we know the horrors that are coming, but we have no choice but to join in the fight as well. We may all well die,” she acknowledged to Mai, “but it is the future we are running towards. It’s the future we have to live with. And it’s the future we have to hope to survive in. That’s all there is to it.”  
  
Really, what more was there to say? This was going to suck in a hundred different ways, so they might as well get it over with and die in the ways that best suited them. From the little reading he had had a chance to do, he had rather formed an opinion of the Old Norse religion as being a bit fatalistic, but now he was getting a real idea of just how much so it really was.  
  
Movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he glanced over in time to see Atemu making his way to his feet, pushing him upright next to the table. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Hela… with Amane on this. We take the fight to them. We probably will not win. A lot of us are probably going to die trying, if we all don’t. But we take the fight to them, and we do it. We have the element of surprise on our side, and we have our listeners.   
  
“We all have our reasons for being in this fight. Some of us are here because we’ve seen the horrors these things can do, that they have done to our friends and our families. Some of us are here to fight because it’s in our natures. We all have our reasons to be here. Most of all, though, we will march to war with these creatures because it’s the right thing to do.  
  
“We all accepted a charge a very long time ago regarding the humans. They may not worship us any longer and so we are weaker than we have ever been before, but we must fight for them. It might well end up being like the Ragnarök Amane spoke of: we might be destined to die in this fight, but I know I, for one, still intend to march onto the field of battle.”  
  
“It’s all we can do,” Bakura spoke up, just barely loud enough for him to hear, even just sitting a little bit down the long table from him. The others in the room seemed to be having no issue with it, so maybe it was just a human versus god thing. Again. He leaned as close as he dared, as best he could without jostling Amane. “All we can do at this point is fight and die. We cannot keep hiding in this realm forever: sooner or later, they’re going to find the entrance and that’ll be all she wrote. They’re getting closer by the day, so let’s get it over with. Let’s do our best to kill them ourselves… before we die horribly.”  
  
Atemu looked nearly as impressed and confused as he felt himself, but neither of them was going to give voice to that, at least not just yet. Instead, the shorter god nodded slowly. “We march first thing in the morning. Go now and prepare yourselves as you best see fit.”  
  
And somehow, that managed to end the debate that been going on for hours: Atemu and Bakura agreeing on something. One by one and in whispering groups, they filed out of the room, leaving Kaiba, Bakura, Amane, and Atemu behind… and even Atemu was headed towards the door.  
  
He did pause on the side of the table opposite Bakura to comment quietly, “I never thought I would live to see the day when you would agree with something I proposed, Bakura.”  
  
The white-haired god snorted inelegantly. “Don’t get used to it. Desperate times sometimes call for very desperate measures.” He sighed. “But I do actually agree: we can’t wait any longer. Most of the places Seto overheard them discussing are actually ways into Annwn.”  
  
Atemu frowned. “There certainly are a lot of ways into your realm, Bakura,” he commented, and Bakura rolled his eyes heavily in response.  
  
“This used to be the Fairy Realm, Atemu. Of course there’s a lot of entrances. Just about anywhere in the United Kingdom where the veil between the worlds is a bit thin, there’s going to be a way in here. Be happy: there could have been a whole lot more.”  
  
“I would be happy, as you say, if you were to tell me you had one more ace up your sleeve you can pull.”  
  
And Bakura sighed again. This time the sound was much more resigned than it had previously been. “I really don’t. I was hoping we’d have the Fair Folk to help us on this. I was hoping we would at least have one war god left to help us in the fight. At this point, all we can do is try to take as many of them with us into death as we possibly can, before we have to launch our endgame.”  
  
Launch their endgame? He almost winced when he remembered: Amane’s father and her blood brothers, the gigantic wolf and the snake that encircled the earth. It was like the ultimate fallback plan: if they all died, the monsters of Ragnarök would destroy the earth and everyone on it.   
  
“If it comes to that,” Atemu returned slowly, “it will be a pleasure to die in battle with you, Bakura.” Cautiously, as if he was worried about it being bitten or something, he extended a hand.  
  
Bakura stared at it a long moment before taking it. “I can’t say I’ll be glad about it, but between the two of us, we’ll give them a slice of hell they won’t soon forget.”  
  
And that was apparently as long as the two of them could get along, if the way they dropped one another’s hand like it was burning them was any indication. Or if there was anything to be inferred from the way Atemu all but dashed out of the room like he was being chased… or how Bakura almost immediately started wiping his hand off on his pants.  
  
“Okay, now that was just gross,” he complained miserably. “Remind me never to shake hands with that bastard again. I don’t know where he’s been. Ugh!”  
  
He almost repeated Ryou’s comment: about if too many more people tapped Atemu, they would hit oil or something. Instead, though, he found all his attention on Amane as she too pushed her way to her feet. She looked steadier than she had earlier in the meeting but probably twice as distant.  
  
“I need to get myself ready,” she declared, meeting neither of their eyes. “I will see you on the field of battle tomorrow, Brother.”  
  
Bakura nodded in agreement, and Amane swept out of the room. He bit his lower lip for a moment before he finally commented, “She’s going to do something stupid.”  
  
The white-haired god nodded again slowly, his eyes still fixed on the door. “I have no doubt about that.”  
  
"What do you think she's going to do?" Because Bakura was her pseudo-brother. Presumably, he should have a better idea what Amane was up to than he did himself.  
  
"I just hope she isn't going to get her brothers or her father." Bakura winced slightly. "That could be... bad."  
  
Given his luck, that was probably exactly where Amane was heading. It would damn the entire world, but it would be better than what would happen if the daevas got to them first.  
  
There was no way he was going to leave Bakura's side tonight, not when this could well be the last night the planet existed, the last night they might ever have together. He didn't want to admit to it, but that might have been the saddest thing he had ever thought. How had he managed to get so attached so quickly?  
  
He rather suspected that the answer had a lot to do with the fact that Bakura had been the first person aside from Mokuba to not treat him like he was mad or a menace or something of that like. He was the first person to treat Kaiba like he mattered, like he was important, for reasons other than what was in his brain and wasn't tainted by the voices he heard.  
  
He had been in Annwn for just two days, and already he thought of it as home. In part, that was because of how welcome he had been made to feel by its inhabitants, but also and mostly, that was because Annwn was where Bakura was. He didn't want to leave; he didn't want to lose this.  
  
"Come on," Bakura intreated, giving his hand a light tug. "Let's head to bed."  
  
It was said so simply, like they had been doing this for years, not days, and he followed the words as easily as if he had been doing so for years as well.   
  
Halfway to the door, he drew up short, stopping in place. Before Bakura could ask the question that was written large on his face, he asked quickly, "Mokuba is going to stay here tomorrow, right?"  
  
The white-haired man nodded. "Of course. Yuugi and Ryou too, for that matter." He stepped closer, running one pale hand along Kaiba's cheek. "I would prefer you stayed as well," at that, Kaiba started to frown, "but I'm selfish. I want to keep you with me until the end." He sighed softly. "And more than likely, that will be tomorrow. There's no way we can win this."  
  
He bit his life, worrying it as he tried to figure out how to say what it was he wanted to. "I want to be there. I want to be with you until the end, if it's tomorrow or in a thousand years."  
  
Bakura laughed shortly. Somehow, though, there was a trace of humor in it. Kaiba wasn't too sure he would be able to find anything funny for a bit, even if he wasn't particularly skilled at that to begin with. "I like the sound of a thousand years. Let's see if we can't work that out somehow."


	16. Chapter 16

It wasn't supposed to be a sunshiny day, was the first thought that came to his mind as they appeared outside Annwn the next day. It was supposed to be dark and gloomy and overcast as the world ended. When he had pictured the end of the world over and over during the last few days, he had pictured storm clouds and lightning and darkness, not a pleasantly sunny day with a light breeze in the air and flowers blooming. Admittedly, that last one might have something to do with Mai, the Goddess of Spring, standing on the surface of the world, but it didn't actually change anything.  
  
This was all wrong. Maybe it meant that today was not the day that the world was meant to end, after all...  
  
No... That was something much too close to hope in that thought. Hope wasn't going to get him through this. What was going to get him through this was staying as close as possible to the people he cared about and trying to keep them-and himself-alive as long as possible.  
  
He saw a lot of the people who had been at the war council last night, and others were still showing up, ones he didn't think that he had seen before. The absence of Malik was like a sore, a blight, on the face of the gathering, though.  
  
More that that, he still had not laid eyes on Amane yet this morning, and that was more distressing than many things, save the tearful goodbye Mokuba had left him with. He and Bakura had speculated last night that Amane was going to do something stupid. He really hoped that she hadn't gone and done it already, whatever it was: releasing her brothers and father, attacking the daevas on her own, even going ahead and killing herself before the battle could begin. Whatever it was, he hoped that she hadn't done it yet. He didn't think it would the latter one, even if she did do something stupid, but there were still two terrifying options left to chose from... as well as any that he had not be able to conjure up from what passed as an imagination in his mind.  
  
No, there she was, somewhere well past the edges of the group, nearly far enough away to be seen as separate. She looked as pale and withdrawn as she had last night; no, even more so, he thought to himself; but there was a fierce determination beneath the grief writ large across her entire body. She was going to do something, of that he was certain, but he lacked the imagination to come up with what in the world that might be.  
  
The wind whistled through the streets. There had been tons of people in this little village the last time he had been up here, with Malik and Black Shuck, though the latter was still present. It seemed deserted now. No, 'desolate' seemed like a better word to go with. It went beyond abandoned in some indescribable way. It wasn't exactly the middle of the day, more like midmorning at the latest, so where were all those people he had seen only yesterday?  
  
The wind shifted, and he was pretty sure that he had just gotten his answer. Death and decay were distinctive scents; there was no mistaking them for anything else. He wasn't an expert, but it smelled like a lot of it. Maybe that answered where all those people he saw only yesterday were now: dead and probably in horrible ways.  
  
Hopefully that wasn't also true of Malik. He didn't have any hope that the god was alive, but he hoped it wasn't as bad as he was imagining it could have been. He still hoped that it was clean and perhaps painless. Malik might have told him to kill himself before, but that was prior to… well, prior to a lot of things. He hadn't seen Malik and Amane then. He and Bakura hadn't really been together yet then. He hadn't proven his worth by listening in on the daevas. Perhaps by now, Malik wouldn't have wanted him dead. He would probably be dead in a few hours, with the daevas on the loose and this final battle about to start, but that didn't mean that he was in any way ready for it. And damn It, it wasn't supposed to be a sunshiny day when the world ended.  
  
Just faintly, if he listened closely, he could hear Bakura talking silently to Amane, coaxing the other woman over to them. Somehow it was working, and she was slipping through the assembled group to stand next to the two of them. Bakura rested a hand on the small of her back without word. Following the other man's lead, he reached out and gave her hand a light squeeze. He couldn't have his brother up here — and he wouldn't _want_ Mokuba out here even if he could be — but it was good that Bakura could have his sister.  
  
The wind shifted again, and Amane went stiff under his fingers. Next to him, he could see Bakura doing the same. Whatever it was, this was not going to be good. Even he knew that. "It can't be…" he faintly heard the woman whisper, and he was almost certain that it was out loud. The look on Bakura's face was equally stunned, and a few steps behind them, he could see Mai sporting an identical expression. Glancing beyond the people here he actually cared about, he could see a similar startled look on Isis' face and, beyond that, Jounouchi's and perhaps even Atemu's as well. This was _not_ going to be good…  
  
And then suddenly Amane's hand was no longer in his. In fact, the woman was no longer at his side. Instead, she was running _into_ the village, almost faster than his eyes could keep up with. "Bakur—?" he stared to ask, but there was no time to get the question out. Bakura's hand had transferred to his arm, and there was that disorienting rush of sensation that he hadn't experienced in days, not since Bakura had brought him to Annwn from the mental asylum. Even coming out into the world with Malik yesterday hadn't felt like this, and maybe the difference had more to do with the differences between Malik and Bakura himself. Either way, it was disorienting.  
  
He had to bite back a wince at where they were standing: right in front of that damned tourist office and café where he had spotted the daevas yesterday. No matter how long after now he lived, he was never going to forget that. It would forever be burned into his mind, if only for how his mind wanted so badly to slip away from the daevas' physical appearance, to say nothing about the trauma of leaving Malik behind to fight those three daevas on his own.  
  
It was going to be burned onto his memory now for an entirely other reason.  
  
The daevas had to have done this. It was the only thing that made sense. They had to have left Malik there for Bakura and the other gods to find. Even in and amidst all this horrible death, in the middle of all this carnage, it was easily one of the cruelest things he could have ever thought to do. Seeing a man he might not have liked but had known crucified to a wall, blood and wounds and gore covering nearly every inch of him, was beyond words. It was horrible, terrible, so many things all rolled into one. It was psychological, intended to mess with their heads… and it was working.  
  
Bakura looked paler than normal, his mouth set in a thin, determined line. He held himself tightly, staring at the sight before their eyes. Amane, on the other hand, was a hair's breadth away from collapsing into tears. Hopefully if that happened, it did not also involving releasing her father and brothers. That remained his number one fear. She laid one hand on Malik's leg, one of the least damaged areas on his body within her reach, her breath shaking as she clearly tried to hold back tears.  
  
 _\--What's going on?--_ And that was Mai's voice in his head. _\--Amane just took off, and…--_  
  
But he suddenly found himself caring a whole lot less about whatever it was that Mai was asking.  
  
Malik groaned. It should be impossible. With that much blood covering him, after being in the hands of the daevas for an entire day, with that many wounds, he should be dead. He wasn't going to discount this sudden miracle, though. Malik was alive somehow, and they needed to — _had_ to — keep him that way. Kaiba wasn't going to let anything happen to change that, not while he had breath in his body. He owed Malik for getting him out alive yesterday, and he intended to pay his debt. Hadn't Bakura said the gods had a healer or a medic or something?  
  
Bakura and Amane were already moving to get Malik down somehow, clearly trying for both haste and causing as little additional pain as possible. They weren't going to be thinking about trying to call the others in here.  
  
 _\--Kaiba, what's going on?!--_ Mai sounded impatient, and hey, there was an option he never would have considered before, if he could manage to talk back.  
  
He had no idea how to go about doing that, so he just tried to make his thoughts as loudly as possible, to keep them as streamlined and focused as possible, which was harder to do than he had anticipated, in all honesty; he should have taken some time at some point to find a way to practice this. Bakura said something about someone being a healer, and he couldn't remember who that was, but they needed him here now, and could Mai please do something to help get the healer here now, please?  
  
There was a weird bending of light just in front of his face, and Mai and Jounouchi were standing in front of him. Almost immediately, a gasp escaped Mai, a hand rising up to cover her mouth in shock. Jounouchi, on the other hand, was already moving, helping Bakura and Amane get Malik down, settling him on the ground, and starting to work. He couldn't see what was it was that Jounouchi was doing, but from the look on Amane's face, it might have been helping already. Seeing as how Kaiba was still firmly of the opinion the man should be dead if even half of the blood on him was his own, then he really shouldn't be surprised that Jounouchi was capable of healing even things like this.  
  
He could faintly see pale eyes watching him from across Malik's body and glanced up to see Bakura watching him. Personally, he was fairly certain that he lacked the words to describe what all he saw in the other man's expression: relief that they had found Malik alive, anger at what had been done to him, worry, fear… and just as many that he couldn't find a way to say.  
  
 _-They're going to pay for this.-_ That was Bakura in his head. He sounded… well, determined was the best word that came to mind. Good. The daevas needed to pay for this. They needed to pay in bloody, horrible ways. They needed to pay and pay and pay until there wasn't a single one of them left on the earth. _-That was a bit vicious,-_ Bakura remarked quietly. He had half a second to feel almost ashamed by it, before the other man continued, _-Don't. I have to say I approve. They did this to try and break us. It's not going to work.-_  
  
 _\--They've just made things worse for themselves,--_ Mai put in, clearly feeling a bit less surprised now. She had drawn herself up to stand straighter, her entire demeanor more controlled and distinctly annoyed. _\--I'm going to rip them apart, piece by piece. It's going to be bloody and glorious.--_  
  
If I ever thought that Mai was the nice one, I take it back. Clearly she's every bit as vicious as… well, everyone else here, I guess.  
  
-Sounds like you finally got the knack of this mind to mind thing,- Bakura's voice put in mildly. Somehow there was not a hint of judgement in his voice, even if it was just in Kaiba's head.  
  
He heard a faint growl and almost went into a panic before realizing it was coming from a very annoyed Jounouchi. "If you guys have time to stand around and chat, then move Amane. I need room to work here."  
  
Bakura snorted quietly, but he almost moved nearly immediately to pull his pseudo-sister by her shoulders away from Jounouchi and Malik. Kaiba couldn't hear what it was the other man was whispering to her that was helping her calm down slowly, but whatever it was, it was definitely helpful. She turned and buried her face in Bakura's chest, but she didn't seem to be crying. Amane didn't seem to be the type to let tears escape on a regular basis, but if she wasn't crying with everything that had happened in the last few minutes, then there was every chance the woman never cried at all.  
  
A cold wind seemed to blow through the town, making a few shutters on abandoned houses clap loudly once, twice, a third time. An eerie silence followed, though.  
  
Figures moved out of the corner of his eyes. Turning towards the movement, he almost found himself looking away again. The beings before him were the kind of things that rational minds could not comprehend and so tended to gloss over. He had seen something like that only yesterday, only now there were a lot more than three of them. This… This was the beginnings of an army: he could see at least a hundred of them, with more appearing by the second.  
  
"Daevas!" Mai yelled, and chaos descended.


	17. Chapter 17

Oddly enough, the longer he watched the battle going on, the easier it was to keep watching.

No, that wasn't the right way to put it. It wasn't _easier_ to watch it, not with people he cared about out there risking their lives and him sitting on the sidelines making sure that Malik was still breathing. That was still difficult to watch. But it was getting easier to keep his eyes on the daevas. Maybe that should be concerning to him, but right now, he was thanking whoever might be listening for it. He might not be able to fight against the daevas, but he could let the gods know where daevas were, so no one got caught unawares.

It still galled him, not to be able to participate in any way more than this. It didn't seem like enough. No, honestly, it wasn't enough. It wasn't nearly enough. They were losing people left and right. Maybe the only reason the people he knew were still alive was because he had been able to warn them of daevas approaching their blind spots, but it wasn't a huge consolation. Each god that fell meant that there was one less ally to keep the people he actually cared about from dying.

And it wasn't like he could do anything for Malik. The god was breathing quite fine on his own. If that changed for any reason, all he had to offer was the basics of CPR… but there was every possibility it wouldn't matter, not unless something drastic happened very shortly.

_Bakura, three at your seven o'clock. Mai, another two behind the one on your left._

What would be lovely would be if he could shove the knowledge of how to talk like this into both Yuugi's and Ryou's heads and let them take over some of this directing. Of course, that would also necessitate bringing them up from Annwn, and it wasn't like anyone could be spared for that at the moment. Neither of them could fight, and it had seemed at the time like they would be more of a hinderance than a help.

Of course, he probably wasn't much better than that at the moment. He could call out directions, but he couldn't fight… and damn it, that still pissed him off. What he wouldn't give for a gun right now. He'd never held one before in his life; they weren't exactly lining up to give them to patients of mental asylums after all; but he had a steady hand and fairly decent aim, so he could at least be putting a few bullet holes into a daeva or two along the way. It probably wouldn't kill them, but it would at least slow them down.

Honestly, he couldn't be sure that a lot was killing them. Every so often, he got a glimpse of lightning or the flash of a sword or the glint of an axe. Usually after that, a daeva would fall. But then it was like a story he had read in one of the many mythology books in Bakura's rooms, about Heracles fighting the Lernaean Hydra: just like the beast growing a new head for every one that was removed, so too did it seem like several new daevas would appear for each one that was killed.

And it wasn't like they were easy to kill either. Oh no, that would have been fair. No, he had seen Malik struggling against three of them yesterday. Now, he was having to watch everyone else try to stay upright and alive against an unending horde of the things.

_Jounouchi, five to your right. Bakura, two more coming up behind you. Amane, three to your left. Mai, duck!_

How could there still be more of them coming? Surely there had to be an end to them! They couldn't actually be unending… could they?

_Atemu, there are about ten heading your way. Mai, another coming. Amane, take about four steps back; you'll have Mai at your back then. Bakura…_

_-I see them.-_

Why did it seem like the daevas were focusing on Bakura? Some part of him tried to think that, realistically, they weren't focusing on Bakura: he was, so he was seeing more of what was coming towards the man. But a very irrational part of him was certain that they were aiming directly for him.

Behind him, he heard a faint cough that almost made him jump out of his skin. Whipping around to look behind, he… Well… The expression about being able to be knocked over with a feather seemed appropriate at the moment.

"Malik?"

How in the world the man was moving, he didn't know. How he was managing to slowly sit up, even if it was leaning against a wall behind him, was beyond anything Kaiba could imagine. It shouldn't be possible… but then, none of this should be possible. They had left possible behind a few days ago.

The god was silent for a long moment, clearly trying to determine if he felt up to speaking. It took a bit, but evidently, he ended up falling on the side of it would be all right to try. "You are determined to make me regret offering to stick an icepick in your ear, aren't you?"

"As I recall it, you wanted Bakura to do it," he returned. In a weird way, it was at once an apology and an acceptance of said apology, without either of them ever having to voice it. As far as he was concerned, this was a much better solution than actually trying the apology.

"Have you seen my swords? No one happened to grab them, did they?"

He might have gaped a bit at that. Surely Malik couldn't be thinking of going back out there into that. What came out of his mouth wasn't that, though. No, what chose to come out was, "The scythe things?" He could have hit himself because he had probably just lost any redeeming points he had gained in Malik's eyes. Not that he overly cared about Malik, but he did care about Amane and for some reason she was quite fond of this guy.

Thankfully all he got was Malik rolling his eyes before dryly commented, "Yeah, that would be the ones."

"Yeah, we've seen them."

He wasn't going to say a word about how they had been use to pin Malik to the wall, how Jounouchi had had to pry them out of his flesh, how Amane had cried at the sight. He wasn't going to breathe a word about any of that. If they all managed to live through this, maybe someone would eventually let Malik know about all of that, but it wasn't going to be him.

Instead, he just nodded at where they were resting, still covered in Malik's own blood against the wall. He had tried picking one of them up—and promptly gotten the shock of his life. It was and wasn't like static electricity: it was in that it felt similar, but it wasn't in that he had never felt static electricity nearly as strong. It had been like trying to grab hold of an electric eel or something. There were still burns on his palms from trying to move to a safer location, something he wasn't about to try again any time soon.

"Have at them," he continued, nodding at the two sickle-shaped blades.

The grin Malik offered was savage and bloodthirsty as he grabbed his own weapons and, carefully pushing himself to his feet, joined the fray.

_Amane, you have a guest you_ don't _want to kill coming up to your left,_ he warned the woman quietly.

The dark-haired woman whirled towards Malik… and froze for a long moment, her hands covering her mouth and her eyes huge in shock. The two of them might as well have been caught in ice for the amount of movement either of them was doing. And then there was this rush they did towards one another, and all he could think was this reminded him of those old Forties movies with the couple finding each other after a long time apart, rushing into each other's arms, like the rest of the world didn't exist. They had shown more than a few of those in his time on the inside of the asylum. He had never heard of anyone doing anything like that in real life, but there was a first time for everything he supposed.

And it was a little embarrassing to watch. He was happy as hell for Amane, but watching them wasn't something he wanted to do. Instead, he turned his attention back to the battle going on around them and tried to pretend his face wasn't burning up. It felt like it couldn't get any redder without bursting into flames. Was it actually possible for someone to die from embarrassment?

_-Sickeningly cute, aren't they?-_ Somehow it actually surprised him that it was Mai's voice speaking in his head. Honestly, he had thought if anyone would have sarcastic commentary to add to the diabetes-inducing display in front of them, it would have been Bakura. _-Yeah, he's a bit busy.-_

Looking again, there had to have been another six or so surrounding Bakura. He was holding his own, though, and that was good. There wasn't any cause to hold back any longer, not like when Malik had been fighting yesterday, surrounded by humans and trying to keep Kaiba alive. He was the only human here now except for Mana. The only other humans nearby were the unnumbered dead lying lifeless around them.

_-The unnumbered dead, huh?-_ Mai commented, her mental voice bone dry. _-That's not a bad— Kaiba, look out!-_

There was a hand out of the corner of his eye, moving fast, faster than he could possibly hope to dodge. There was a teeth-rattling, jarring sensation that he was a little worried might be his head hitting the wall behind him.

Everything went black.

* * *

The snap of a fist against his cheek woke him up.

It wasn't exactly new or unexpected. He had been catching hell from his uncle for years. A punch wasn't exactly surprising… except where it was.

He couldn't remember what it was he was supposed to have done this time to earn a punishment. Granted, there wasn't always a good reason, but the old man usually at least pretended to have an excuse.

And more than not remembering what he had done to earn the punch, he didn't remember… much of anything. He knew _who_ he was. He knew who Gouzaburou was. He knew that he had a little brother, Mokuba, who was… somewhere. But everything else? A total blank.

What had he done to earn a punishment? Was it something he had done or something Mokuba had perhaps done… or was it something that only existed in Gouzaburou's mind? That had happened before.

But usually by the time the fists started flying but well before the crop came out, there were muttered explanations of why this was happening. His uncle always had to have his justifications for any- and everything.

He was silent right now. That wasn't right.

None of this was right. He should be a child, to be standing in front of Kaiba Gouzaburou, getting caught across the face, chest, side, stomach, with fists. The fists should be angry, not dispassionate. Mokuba should be nearby, screaming at their uncle.

But he was in his mid-twenties. Gouzaburou was silent… and had been dead for years. Mokuba wasn't here because… because… because…

…Because he was still safely hidden away in Annwn.

Which meant… Which meant…

**_This man is not your worst memory._ **

* * *

 

"Now remember, everyone! Hugs, not slugs!"

Put like that, and suddenly it was all he wanted to do: beat on someone until the flesh broke and blood poured forth, until what was supposed to be on the insides was on the outside and everyone could see. That had to be the most glorious idea he had heard yet in this place and certain was a lot better than anything anyone in charge had ever proposed.

The problem was that he couldn't decide if he wanted to kill that woman, Mazaki, first or last. Sometimes he thought it would be best to get it over with so he didn't have to hear her anymore, but other times he thought he wanted to make sure she suffered most, so having her go last would be best. He was relatively certain that she was the one who kept making recommendations to up his pills, all the wall talking about things like she knew anything. She didn't know anything.

All of this seemed really familiar, but it also wasn't in a way he could not place. Something was off. Something was missing.

Mokuba. It would hardly be the first time his brother had disappeared in this place. What else was to be expected when the staff seemed so determined to believe the boy didn't exist when he was obviously right there? Who wanted to put up with something like that on an ongoing basis?

It seemed like he was just right here, though, just beside him. They might have even been talking, but Mokuba certainly wasn't here now. There was no one there.

Well, no one except Mazaki anyway. She turned that annoyingly bright face at him, like she was trying to leak sunshine and rainbows from every orifice. "Kaiba-san, if you don't want to join us in checkers," she said, the smile on her face never faltering, "you're welcome to read or watch television." He snorted his thoughts on that matter. The only television he ever wanted to watch was the news, and they very rarely showed that in here. As for reading, he had long since read everything they had to offer, such as the pitiful selection was. "Or you can go back to your room for the rest of the afternoon."

"Sounds great," he bit out hard. "It's better than out here."

Storming out had little effect on the always overly cheerful nurse. It never did. She was already turning away to speak with one of the doctors. The paranoid part of him wondered if they were talking about him. Hmph, probably. There wasn't anyone else here nearly as interesting.

Which was a bit weird, right? Surely there must have been someone here at least as interesting as he was. Very likely not as intelligent, of course, but perhaps nearly as interesting?

Why couldn't he remember? There was something here he was supposed to be remembering. For the life of him, he couldn't puzzle it out. It seemed like it was something important, something he needed to do, to say, to _something_ , but he couldn't hold onto it. It kept slipping right through his mental fingers like sands through the hourglass of a life. If he wasn't careful, all the sand was going slip right on by him, leaving him just another member of the unnumbered dead.

'The unnumbered dead'? He had to snort in amusement as he turned the corner into his room. Now that was a weird thought, even for him. Yes, he did have the occasional morbid leaning; who didn't, in a place like this; but counting himself in with the already deceased seemed over the top even for him.

Mokuba would know what it was he was supposed to be doing. He just had to find his little brother, and things would start making sense again. He just had to find Mokuba.

Out of the corner of his eye, something moved. He tried to turn to face it, but there was nothing there. Whatever was in that darkened corner was something that his mind wanted to slip away from, like it was trying to protect itself.

One thing was for certain, though: it was _not_ Mokuba.


	18. Chapter 18

He had to keep reminding himself that it was far from the first time that Mokuba had disappeared or gone quiet or otherwise made himself unavailable. His little brother had no love for this place and its inhabitants' habit of ignoring him. He didn't always see a need to subject himself to that level of abuse.

It was troubling, though, that he couldn't recall a single time that Mokuba had been gone for so long. If it had ever happened before, he couldn't remember it. Beyond that, there was something else missing, something that was more elusive, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. He would remember it eventually. He was quite intelligent actually. There were few things he couldn't figure out if he applied himself.

Whatever it was that was missing, it had a name. It was a name that was on the tip of his tongue, just elusively out of reach for some reason.

That was what he was thinking about in Kawai Shizuka's office instead of paying attention to what the terminally cheerful doctor was blathering on about now.

Wait a minute…

"Bakura." That was the name he had been trying to remember since last night. He wasn't sure what it meant—if it was a thing or a person or what—but that was what was missing: something called Bakura. That was a step in the right direction, if he had managed to remember that much. The rest would surely follow… right?

"'Bakura'?" Kawai questioned, tilting her head just slightly in her obvious confusion. "Who's that?"

So maybe it was a name. That was another step closer to what he wanted, namely answers.

"They're supposed to be here," he answered after a few moment's debate. He didn't particularly want to share this information with Kawai, but there was a possibility that she could tell him who this Bakura person was and where he would find more information on them. No, not 'them'. " _He_ is supposed to have been here since last night."

A small frown marred Kawai's face, but her voice remained unrelentingly upbeat as she spoke. "I can't say I recognize the name. You know you're supposed to let me know when a new voice starts talking, Kaiba. When did Bakura show up?"

He shook his head heavily side to side in negation. "He has never 'showed up'. He was supposed to be here last night, but he's not here."

"Is Bakura a new voice you've heard? Like the others?"

He had to think about that. He knew what Bakura's voice sounded like, in a weird way that was like the memory of a vivid dream, so that was a possibility. If he pushed himself hard, harder than he would have thought it possible to push himself, he could almost get half a glimpse of a face. He knew he had an impression of light features: white hair, pale skin, blue eyes that were washed out to a shade of almost gray. A word that came to mind was 'whitewashed,' which seemed an odd thing to think about a person, but nonetheless one of the first to come to mind to describe someone. He had never had a single visual hallucination in his life, so…

"No, he's not just a voice," he stated with more certainty than he felt at the moment.

What he didn't know was why he was so certain. All he had to go on was that word, 'whitewashed', and that just didn't seem like a possible word for a person. He had the faintest impression of a voice—and okay, that was somewhat common for him—but he had never imagined a face to going along with any of his voices before. Never once in his life had that ever happened. He rather suspected that he lacked the creativity for something like that.

"He's real," he insisted once more. He just wished he didn't sound like he was trying to convince himself of that fact. He wanted to add on to that, but somehow it didn't feel like the right time to say that Bakura might just have been as real as Mokuba was. Mentioning Mokuba was hit and miss around here on the best of days, and today didn't strike him as the best of days. There was another fact niggling at the back of his mind that he could provide, though. "He was supposed to move into Honda's old room."

"There's no one in Honda's old room, Kaiba." The woman's voice was gentle but over a steel core. It reminded him of someone else, someone that took a little more thinking to place: Amane, Bakura's pseudo-sister, a woman who struck something the back of his mind as someone who could one day be a friend… but right now was someone that he cared about. "We would never move someone into Honda's room so quickly after what happened."

"But you did before." Where was all of this coming from? It was like the words wouldn't stop running out of his mouth, and it was weird, and he was just going to keep going with it. "You put Bakura in there, and you said Bakura has a lot of issues to work on before he could leave, but he and I just walked out the door a day or so later. I remember all of this so clearly… and Gwyllgi and Malik and Mai and…"

Kawai reached over to him, something he could never remember being a frightening gesture from the doctor before today, and wrapped a surprisingly strong but delicate-looking hand around his forearm. **_"So this is what you fear the most,"_** she said in a voice that was very much not her own, not one that he… No, he recognized it. It had spoken to him once before in his life, when he was still with Gouzaburou. It still sent chills down his spine and made every hair on his body stand on end. **_"You fear for your own sanity, that the people you know are not real. This is good, little listener. You should fear it. You've disrupted our plans to quietly slaughter the remaining gods, and so we shall have our fun with you instead."_**

The hand let go…

* * *

"Now remember, everyone! Hugs, not slugs!"

Put like that, and suddenly it was all he wanted to do: beat on someone until the flesh broke and blood poured forth, until what was supposed to be on the insides was on the outside and everyone could see. That had to be the most glorious idea he had heard yet in this place and certain was a lot better than anything anyone in charge had ever proposed.

The problem was that he couldn't decide if he wanted to kill that woman, Mazaki, first or last. Sometimes he thought it would be best to get it over with so he didn't have to hear her anymore, but other times he thought he wanted to make sure she suffered most, so having her go last would be best. He was relatively certain that she was the one who kept making recommendations to up his pills, all the wall talking about things like she knew anything. She didn't know anything…

Wait, stop. Just stop. This wasn't right. This wasn't what was supposed to happen.

No, not that. It wasn't that it wasn't supposed to happen. It was that it had _already_ happened. And it hadn't just already happened once: this had to have been the second time by now for him to be realizing it so easily and so quickly.

Mokuba was supposed to be right next to him at this very moment. Bakura was supposed to be showing up tonight.

What the hell was happening up there in the real world? What was he missing?

He remembered a voice, one that sounded like a thousand nails going down a thousand chalkboards, echoing through his head on top of itself. Right now, he would take Malik threatening to poke his brains out with an icepick again over this. If he had to live through this loop one more time, he might just lose his mind… except that he was fairly certain that _that_ was the intended result. He didn't want to give them what they wanted, not if he could help it.

Well, this was more than he remembered before. He had barely managed to remember Bakura before. Now he had faint memories of Malik and a lot of the others, at least the ones that were connected to Bakura and that he gave half a damn about. He remembered why Mokuba wasn't here now, since his little brother was in Annwn, safely tucked away from the daevas.

The daevas… Now that was a valid option for what was happening here, why he was separated from everyone else, why everything had suddenly gotten beyond the pale for weirdness.

He just somehow had to find a way to get back, and… and… Well, now, there was a bitch. He couldn't remember what had been happening when he got stuck here. It had to have been something important for the daevas to trap him in his worst memories, forcing him to face his worst fear over and over: that he was more insane than he had ever realized.

What he did remember from before was that he had been feeling frustrated. Something had not been working out in ways that pleased him.

The daeva that had spoke into his head had said something about a plan to quietly kill the few gods left in the world and how Kaiba had done… something to interrupt that plan. He hadn't disrupted it, but he had made it more difficult, so they were torturing him for it.

It didn't seem much like torture. He had dealt with more pain at the hands of his uncle than he was experiencing here. That was odd to think: that a middle aged human had known more about pain than demonic beings that were systematically trying to wipe out the world. Not that he was going to say any of that out loud, of course.

But then, the gods could hear what he had been thinking. Could the daevas do the same? Because in that case, even his thoughts weren't private. He would have no sacrosanct area just to himself.

And maybe that was the torture, just as much as not ever seeing Mokuba or Bakura or anyone who was a real person… or god… or what have you.

This couldn't go on forever, right? There had to be a way out of here. He just had to find it. And he would too.

Somehow.

But he was ready to be out here now. He winced his eyes closed tightly…

* * *

"Now remember, everyone! Hugs, not slugs!"

Put like that, and suddenly it was all he wanted to do: beat on someone until the flesh broke and blood poured forth, until what was supposed to be on the insides was on the outside and everyone could see. That had to be the most glorious idea he had heard yet in this place and certain was a lot better than anything anyone in charge had ever proposed.

The problem was that he couldn't decide if he wanted to kill that woman, Mazaki, first or last. Sometimes he thought it would be best to get it over with…

No, shit. This wasn't real! This wasn't the real world. This wasn't what was real.

This had happened too many times already. Someone had set the world on a broken record that was starting to skip. This was one ride he wanted to get off of right the fuck now. It was like the most demented tilt-a-whirl on the planet.

_Bakura, if you can hear me, get me out of here._

He wasn't above begging. If he thought it would make any difference, he would call out to every god he had met in the last week and hope that one of them would be able to do something for him. He knew realistically, though, that only Bakura was likely to listen to him.

Whether or not Bakura could hear him was another matter altogether. But there was no way Bakura would hear him if he didn't try calling out for him, so he just had to keep trying. If he kept trying, maybe, _maybe_ , Bakura would be able to hear him.

_Bakura, please…_

He closed his eyes.

* * *

"Now remember, everyone! Hugs, not slugs!"

Put like that, and suddenly it was all he wanted to do: beat on someone until the flesh broke and blood poured forth…

He took back everything he had thought about this not being torture. Gouzaburou would have been proud of the horribleness of it. It was one of the worst things that could have been designed.

The entire world was a tilt-a-whirl gone out of control. He wanted off. He needed to get off it.

_Bakura, please! Get me out of here! Amane… Malik… Mai… Bakura… Someone, anyone, please!_

He was starting to lose track of how many times this had happened. Five? Six? Ten? Dozens? More than that?

There had been a goddess in one of Bakura's books, a goddess of the mad and the insane. Lyssa, he thought was what she had been called. He hadn't met her at a war council. Maybe she was dead. Maybe she never existed. It was tempting to beg her to release him from this.

He wasn't wasting his breath and remaining sanity on a deity who may or may not exist. No, there was no point in that. He had gods he knew were real. If they survived the assault of the daevas, they would help him. If they didn't…

There was no good in thinking of what could happen if they failed. Nothing good would come of that. They would win. They would win, or they would let the world be destroyed. Either way, he would be out of here sooner or later. He just had to hold on to his mind until then.

Otherwise, he would end up praying to join Bakura's unnumbered dead.

_Please, Bakura! Please!_

Against his will, he had to eventually blink his eyes closed.

* * *

"Now remember, everyone! Hugs, not slugs!"

Put like that, and…

And damn it.

How many times was this? A bare minimum number had to be six. Six repetitions, six loops, through these same few moments. It was brilliant torture.

No, it was probably best not to think too much about it. He would get out of this. Somehow he would escape this.

_Bakura, please!_

This time, when he closed his eyes, it was to try to block everything else out.

* * *

"Now remember, everyone! Hugs, not slugs!"

Oh gods, not again. Not again. He couldn't take this again. There had to be something someone could do to get him out of here.

And if Mazaki wasn't bad enough—and she was plenty bad enough—there was the laughter in the back of his mind. It was grating. It reminded him of fingernails grating their way down a chalkboard. It was definitely laughing at him. There was no doubt about it.

It was laughing at him, and there was nothing he could do about it. There was no one helping him. There was no one listening to him. If no one had come by now, no one was going to show up. There wasn't anyone out there to help him.

He just had to… had to… something. He was supposed to be be doing… something. He was supposed to be concentrating on… something.

He hoped it wasn't staying sane. Right now, that felt like a losing battle.

* * *

"Now remember, everyone! Hugs, not slugs!"

Fuck… Again? _Again?_ How many times was he going to have to do this before he lost his mind? Or had he already lost his mind? He couldn't be sure. He couldn't remember. He had to get out of here. Was there any place besides here? Had there been anything besides this?

No, wait, he remembered the answer to this. Mokuba. Bakura. He wasn't sure he remembered what or who those names meant any longer.

He remembered the names, though. The names meant something. He had to hold on to that.

Mokuba. Bakura.

His name was… was… What was it again?

Kaiba Seto.

Mokuba. Bakura. Kaiba Seto.

Mokuba. Bakura. Kaiba Seto.

If he could hold onto those three things, he would at least have that bit of his sanity. He couldn't vouch for the rest of it. Other names, other places, other things… He wasn't sure that they existed. He wasn't sure that anything else was real. But those three things were. He could hold onto them.

Mokuba. Bakura. Kaiba Seto.

Mokuba. Bakura. Kaiba Seto.

If he repeated them enough, he would be able to remember them. He wouldn't forget them. Even if everything else was gone, he would remember them.

Mokuba. Bakura. Kaiba Seto.

Mokuba. Bakura. Kaiba Seto.

At least that voice was gone. It had been like a thousand nails on a thousand chalkboards all at once. It had echoed through his head over and over like a gong. It made it feel like the inside of his head was bleeding. It had been so long since he had heard that voice.

It had been so long since he had heard any voice besides the woman's, the nurse's.

"Mokuba. Bakura. Kaiba Seto."

Even his own voice sounded weird at this point.

He had to get out of here. He had to get out of here. He had to get out of here…

* * *

"Now remember, everyone! Hugs, not slugs!"

No, no, no, no, no, _no_ … This couldn't keep happening.

No, he had to remember… something. Names. He had to remember names. Mokuba. Bakura. Mokuba. Bakura. Mokuba. Bakura.

He didn't know what those names meant. He didn't know who they belonged to. He didn't know if they belonged to real people or people he made up. He might have made them up. Something—anything!—to keep a portion of his mind intact.

Mokuba. Bakura. Mokuba. Bakura…

_-Seto?-_


	19. Chapter 19

He was awake. He wasn't too sure he was happy about that fact.

He didn't want to open his eyes. If he opened his eyes, all he was going to see would that nurse, all he would hear would be that damned phrase that was forever burned into his memory. If he ever heard it again, it would be too soon.

Maybe that he hadn't heard it yet was a good sign, but then… he hadn't opened his eyes yet either. If Mazaki was there waiting, he didn't have to see her. That probably didn't mean that he didn't have to hear her, but one victory at a time was enough for him right now. He didn't mind that it wasn't a major victory. A victory at all was enough for now. He could claim that much for now.

Something was subtly different now, though. Maybe that wasn't reassuring, though. The air smelled different. Before it had been stale and recycled, just like the inside of the asylum had been. Now it wasn't. He wan't sure he had words for it anymore. So many of his words seemed to have fled him.

Part of him was honestly afraid that if he opened his mouth, all that would come out would be 'Hugs, not slugs'.

'Earthy'. That was a good word for how the air smelled. 'Loamy' worked even better. Why were those the words that came to him? He couldn't imagine.

But this had to be a new level of the same torture. No matter what happened next, it wasn't going to be good. He couldn't trust any of his senses, not right now.

"Seto?"

Not even his hearing. Maybe especially not his hearing. He didn't want to start hoping. Hope was a treacherous, deceitful thing. Once he started hoping, he could be disappointed. If he starting hoping, that would be when he would find out what kind of a trick this really was.

But damn it, there was only one person, one person in all the world, who called him by his first name. Even his little brother didn't call him 'Seto'. And he had used this person's name as an anchor for his own failing sanity. Hell, in the back of his mind, he was still repeating those same two names: Mokuba and Bakura.

This was a hellish new level of torture. Because it sounded so much like Bakura… but it couldn't _be_ Bakura. It couldn't be. He was still stuck inside the asylum… and if he wasn't, he might as well have been. He was none too sure how much sanity he had left, if he had had any to begin with.

It couldn't be Bakura. It _couldn't_. It couldn't be because Bakura would have found a way to get him out when he had begged and pleaded for release.

"I tried, Seto. We had to defeat the daevas before we could, though."

He wasn't sure if that was proof that this was Bakura or that it wasn't. On the one hand, the other man had responded to what he was thinking, which was a point on the side of it being a trick. Not that Bakura himself hadn't managed to do that himself a time or two, but it was too fresh, that voice of nails on a chalkboard as it responded to his fears and thoughts. But on the second hand, there was that name again and how Bakura was the only one who ever called him that; he even thought of himself as Kaiba, when he could hold on to enough of his mind to remember he had an identity.

(There was a quiet but pained sound next to him. He wasn't thinking about it. It had to be part of the trick.)

But on the third hand—and just how many hands were needed at this point was getting ridiculous—defeating the daeva army seemed like it should have been impossible. He couldn't remember the details, but it seemed as though there had been so many of them, more than the relatively small handful of gods should have been capable of defeating.

"Yeah, that was thanks to you."

And that was such a _non sequitur_ that he had to open his eyes in utter confusion.

And he was in Bakura's bedroom. He recognized the gigantic bed: how the sheets felt against his skin, how much room he had to move around, the way the bed dipped when Bakura moved to sit next to him.

"Yeah, I thought that would get your attention." Bakura sounded vaguely smug, much like the cat that just ate the canary, as the saying went.

"Wh—" Damn, his throat hurt when he tried to speak. Certainly it hurt worse than he thought it should. He couldn't remember anything happening to his throat. That was not, however, the issue of the moment. "What do you mean?"

"Mai heard you say something about the 'unnumbered dead'." Bakura shrugged lightly with just one shoulder, a small motion that somehow spoke volumes. "We emptied all of the lands of the dead. They overwhelmed the daevas. It was enough to eventually turn the tide. We… lost a lot of people in the battle."

He felt his blood run cold at those words. "Who?"

For a long moment, Bakura looked like he was likely to object. He wasn't going to give him the option to do so, though, not if he could help it. That must have been written plainly on his face, because Bakura pressed on. "Of the ones you met…" He nodded. The deep breath Bakura took was heavy and a little shaky. "Varon, Isis, Mana," and he hadn't even realized that she had gone above during the battle, "Honda, Vivien, Raphael, Ryuuzaki, Rebecca, Siegfried… We almost lost Jounouchi and Malik all over again." He took another deep breath and tried for a grin. It wasn't a bad attempt, but it still didn't quite reach his eyes. "Apparently I can't get rid of Atemu even if the world nearly ends."

That meant that, somehow, all the people he actually cared about were still alive: Bakura, Amane, and Malik. Mokuba hadn't gone above, so he was still safe. The other two listeners were still around; it took him a few long, long moments to dredge their names out of the recesses of his mind: Ryou and Yuugi.

He wanted to ask so many questions. He wanted to know if Bakura was all right. He wanted to know where Mokuba was. He wanted to know if Malik was all right now. He wanted to know why his throat hurt so badly. He wanted to know what was going to happen next. He wanted to know what had taken so long for Bakura to get him out of… wherever he had been.

So of course, that was what Bakura picked up on, that last question. "I… couldn't get you out. I tried. The damned daevas had you too tightly bound up in your own mind." He frowned hard. "I had to get Jounouchi to break you free. And I'm still holding it against him that he prioritized putting Atemu's arm back on first."

Okay, yeah, that sounded like Bakura. He didn't think that he could make up a detail like that about the man. He had realized fairly quickly that Bakura and Atemu had this intensely antagonist relationship, but he couldn't have come up with a little detail like that. It just wasn't in his make-up; he wasn't that creative. It was a small but reassuring thing.

Bakura rolled his eyes. The movement seemed exaggerated, but since he followed it up with a chuckle, it didn't seem like a bad thing. "Of course what convinces you that this is real is something to do with Atemu. Of course. Isn't that just peachy?"

Part of him wanted to immediately apologize. Apologize before he could end up back in that world. But he wasn't going to. Bakura wasn't going to send him back there.

"Got that damn right." Bakura readjusted himself, settling to sit with his back against the headboard. The movement seemed stilted, like it hurt to do. But before he could summon his voice back to ask out loud, Bakura started talking again. "Let's see: about your other questions. Your throat hurts because you've been screaming."

He frowned. "I don't scream."

"Even Malik has been screaming every time he closes his eyes." Bakura's voice sounded both steady and haunted at once. He wasn't too sure how that could be. "He couldn't describe what it is they did to him, but he doesn't want to close his eyes anymore."

"How long…?" He wasn't sure how to ask this.

"Have you been back?" Bakura guessed. It was close enough, so he nodded. "It's been almost a week since we went to war."

A week… It didn't seem possible. But maybe it made sense. It might even explain why he still felt so tired.

"As for where that little brother of yours is, the last I saw of him, he was with Mai and Ryou and the hounds. It figures you would decide to wake up one of the few times he's not in the room." Bakura offered him a grin. He tried to return it, but it seemed to fail miserably. "I asked Amane to go get him when you started waking up." He shrugged again lightly, and it still seemed pained. "I figure you'll believe you're awake when you see him, right?" Kaiba couldn't help a nod. It had been him and Mokuba for so long, and… Well, he had used those _two_ names to carry him through: Bakura _and_ Mokuba. "I thought so. He should be here in a few minutes."

Those had been most of his questions. Only most of them, mind, though. There were still a few that the god hadn't touched, however, and he wasn't about to let to let him get away with not answering them. He certainly didn't hope Bakura thought he could get away with that.

"Wouldn't dream of it. What happens now? We're off the beaten path at this point. We've survived the end of the world. We beat the unbeatable daevas and survived to tell the tale. Who knows where we go from here?"

That… was fair enough. It wasn't quite… No, wait. Bakura had used 'we', kept using 'we'. Clearly Kaiba was included in that unknown future. Bakura didn't actually have to say a word to that: the look he leveled on Kaiba spoke volumes. But that still left one question. Clearly Bakura wanted to make him ask it out loud.

"What… about you?" Hopefully it wouldn't take too long for his voice to recover.

_-I'll be all right, Seto. Even gods take a little while to recuperate from war. Quit worrying about it.-_

His first thought was that that was good news. Following that was wonder that Bakura thought he could dismiss his worry so easily. But his immediate next one was to wonder why Bakura had switched to speaking in his mind instead of out loud. He figured that it was a combination of making things a bit more even, since he was already picking up what Kaiba wanted to know from his own mind, and the fact that even Kaiba could hear the distinctive sound of his little brother running through the hallways, heading towards this room.

Mokuba burst into the room with a shouted "Niisama!" He rounded the huge bed so that he wouldn't have to clamor over Bakura, which said… something. He wasn't going to think about too hard right now.

He wasn't sure if he was actually awake or if any of this was real.

But if this was his dream world now, then he didn't want to wake back up again.


End file.
